Orpheus C. Kerr.
LETTER II.
SHOWING HOW THE WRITER INCREASED IN YEARS AND INDISCRETION, AND HOW HE WAS SAVED FROM MATRIMONY BY THE LAMENTABLE EXAMPLE OF JED SMITH.
Washington, D.C., March 25th, 1861.
To continue from where I left off, my boy: between the interesting ages of ten and eighteen I went to school at the village academy, working through the English branches and the Accidence, with a lively sense of a preponderance of birch in the former, and occasional class-sickness in the latter.
Those were my happiest days, my boy; and as I look back to them now, for a moment all my flippancy leaves me, and I forget that I am an American and a politician. Those dear old days! those short, unreal days! Only long in being long past.
It was just after the eternal "Bonus—Bona—Bonum" of the master had ceased to ring in my ears, that I commenced to be a young man. I knew that I was becoming a young man, my boy; for it was then that I began to regard the unmarried women of America with sheepish bashfulness, and stumbled awkwardly as I entered my father's pew in church. Then it was that the sound of a young female giggle threw me into a cold perspiration, and a looking-glass deluded me into gesticulating in solitude before it, and extemporizing the speeches I was to make when called upon to justify the report of fame by admiring populaces.
Do you remember the asinine time in your own life, my boy,—do you remember it? I know that you do, my boy, for I can feel your blush on my own cheeks.
Of the few women of America who looked upon me with favor, there was one—Ellen—whom I really loved, I think; for of all the girls, the mention of her name, alone, gave me that peculiar feeling in which instinctive impulse blends undefinably and perpetually with a sense of reverent respect; or, rather, with a sense of some unworthiness of self. Ellen died before I had known her a year. I thought afterwards, like any other youngster, that I loved half-a-dozen different girls; but, even in maturer years, second love is a poor imitation. Say what you will about second love, my boy, in the breast of him truly a man, it is but an imperium in imperio—a flower on the grave of the first.