“I had taken my breakfast, and was waiting for my horse, when, in pacing up and down the piazza, I saw a young girl seated near a window, evidently a visitor. She was very pretty; with auburn hair and blue eyes, and was dressed in white. I had seen nothing of the kind since I had left Richmond; and at that time I was too much of a boy to be much struck by female charms. She was so delicate and dainty-looking, so different from the hale, buxom, brown girls of the woods; and then her white dress!—it was perfectly dazzling! Never was poor youth more taken by surprise, and suddenly bewitched. My heart yearned to know her; but how was I to accost her? I had grown wild in the woods, and had none of the habitudes of polite life. Had she been like Peggy Pugh or Sally Pigman, or any other of my leathern-dressed belles of the Pigeon Roost, I should have approached her without dread; nay, had she been as fair as Schultz’s daughters, with their looking-glass lockets, I should not have hesitated; but that white dress, and those auburn ringlets, and blue eyes, and delicate looks, quite daunted, while they fascinated me. I don’t know what put it into my head, but I thought, all at once, that I would kiss her! It would take a long acquaintance to arrive at such a boon, but I might seize upon it by sheer robbery. Nobody knew me here. I would just step in, snatch a kiss, mount my horse, and ride off. She would not be the worse for it; and that kiss—oh! I should die if I did not get it!
“I gave no time for the thought to cool, but entered the house, and stepped lightly into the room. She was seated with her back to the door, looking out at the window, and did not hear my approach. I tapped her chair, and as she turned and looked up, I snatched as sweet a kiss as ever was stolen, and vanished in a twinkling. The next moment I was on horseback, galloping homeward; my very ears tingling at what I had done.
“On my return home I sold my horse, and turned everything to cash; and found, with the remains of the paternal purse, that I had nearly four hundred dollars; a little capital which I resolved to manage with the strictest economy.
“It was hard parting with old Miller, who had been like a father to me; it cost me, too, something of a struggle to give up the free, independent wild-wood life I had hitherto led; but I had marked out my course, and had never been one to flinch or turn back.
“I footed it sturdily to Bardstown; took possession of the quarters for which I had bargained, shut myself up, and set to work with might and main to study. But what a task I had before me! I had everything to learn; not merely law, but all the elementary branches of knowledge. I read and read, for sixteen hours out of the four-and-twenty; but the more I read the more I became aware of my own ignorance, and shed bitter tears over my deficiency. It seemed as if the wilderness of knowledge expanded and grew more perplexed as I advanced. Every height gained only revealed a wider region to be traversed, and nearly filled me with despair. I grew moody, silent, and unsocial, but studied on doggedly and incessantly. The only person with whom I held any conversation was the worthy man in whose house I was quartered. He was honest and well meaning, but perfectly ignorant, and I believe would have liked me much better if I had not been so much addicted to reading. He considered all books filled with lies and impositions, and seldom could look into one without finding something to rouse his spleen. Nothing put him into a greater passion than the assertion that the world turned on its own axis every four-and-twenty hours. He swore it was an outrage upon common sense. ‘Why, if it did,’ said he, ‘there would not be a drop of water in the well by morning, and all the milk and cream in the dairy would be turned topsy-turvy! And then to talk of the earth going round the sun! How do they know it? I’ve seen the sun rise every morning and set every evening for more than thirty years. They must not talk to me about the earth’s going round the sun!’
“At another time he was in a perfect fret at being told the distance between the sun and moon. ‘How can any one tell the distance?’ cried he. ‘Who surveyed it? who carried the chain? By Jupiter! they only talk this way before me to annoy me. But then there’s some people of sense who give in to this cursed humbug! There’s Judge Broadnax, now, one of the best lawyers we have; isn’t it surprising he should believe in such stuff? Why, sir, the other day I heard him talk of the distance from a star he called Mars to the sun! He must have got it out of one or other of those confounded books he’s so fond of reading; a book some impudent fellow has written, who knew nobody could swear the distance was more or less.’
“For my own part, feeling my own deficiency in scientific lore, I never ventured to unsettle his conviction that the sun made his daily circuit round the earth; and for aught I said to the contrary, he lived and died in that belief.
“I had been about a year at Bardstown, living thus studiously and reclusely, when, as I was one day walking the street, I met two young girls, in one of whom I immediately recalled the little beauty whom I had kissed so impudently. She blushed up to the eyes, and so did I; but we both passed on with further sign of recognition. This second glimpse of her, however, caused an odd fluttering about my heart. I could not get her out of my thoughts for days. She quite interfered with my studies. I tried to think of her as a mere child, but it would not do; she had improved in beauty, and was tending toward womanhood; and then I myself was but little better than a stripling. However, I did not attempt to seek after her, or even to find out who she was, but returned doggedly to my books. By degrees she faded from my thoughts, or if she did cross them occasionally, it was only to increase my despondency; for I feared that with all my exertions, I should never be able to fit myself for the bar, or enable myself to support a wife.
“One cold stormy evening I was seated, in dumpish mood, in the bar-room of the inn, looking into the fire, and turning over uncomfortable thoughts, when I was accosted by some one who had entered the room without my perceiving it. I looked up, and saw before me a tall and, as I thought, pompous-looking man, arrayed in small clothes and knee-buckles, with powdered head, and shoes nicely blacked and polished; a style of dress unparalleled in those days, in that rough country. I took a pique against him from the very portliness of his appearance, and stateliness of his manner, and bristled up as he accosted me. He demanded if my name was not Ringwood.
“I was startled, for I supposed myself perfectly incog.; but I answered in the affirmative.