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Page 5
Could they beam upon you less lovingly, great heart, in the
chamber warmed by your affection and now sanctified by death?
Were they less glad to know that the repose would be unbroken
forevermore, since it came the glorious reward, my brother, of
the friend who went gladly to it through his faith, having
striven for it through his works?
ROSWELL MARTIN FIELD
Buena Park, December, 1895.
The Chapters in this Book
MY FIRST LOVE
THE BIRTH OF A NEW PASSION
THE LUXURY OF READING IN BED
THE MANIA OF COLLECTING SEIZES ME
BALDNESS AND INTELLECTUALITY
MY ROMANCE WITH FIAMMETTA
THE DELIGHTS OF FENDER-FISHING
BALLADS AND THEIR MAKERS
BOOKSELLERS AND PRINTERS, OLD AND NEW
WHEN FANCHONETTE BEWITCHED ME
DIAGNOSIS OF THE BACILLUS LIBRORUM
THE PLEASURES OF EXTRA-ILLUSTRATION
ON THE ODORS WHICH MY BOOKS EXHALE
ELZEVIRS AND DIVERS OTHER MATTERS
A BOOK THAT BRINGS SOLACE AND CHEER
THE MALADY CALLED CATALOGITIS
THE NAPOLEONIC RENAISSANCE
MY WORKSHOP AND OTHERS
OUR DEBT TO MONKISH MEN
I
MY FIRST LOVE
At this moment, when I am about to begin the most important
undertaking of my life, I recall the sense of abhorrence with
which I have at different times read the confessions of men famed
for their prowess in the realm of love. These boastings have
always shocked me, for I reverence love as the noblest of the
passions, and it is impossible for me to conceive how one who has
truly fallen victim to its benign influence can ever thereafter
speak flippantly of it.
Yet there have been, and there still are, many who take a seeming
delight in telling you how many conquests they have made, and
they not infrequently have the bad taste to explain with
wearisome prolixity the ways and the means whereby those
conquests were wrought; as, forsooth, an unfeeling huntsman is
forever boasting of the game he has slaughtered and is forever
dilating upon the repulsive details of his butcheries.
I have always contended that one who is in love (and having once
been in love is to be always in love) has, actually, no
confession to make. Love is so guileless, so proper, so pure a
passion as to involve none of those things which require or which
admit of confession. He, therefore, who surmises that in this
exposition of my affaires du coeur there is to be any betrayal of
confidences, or any discussion, suggestion, or hint likely either
to shame love or its votaries or to bring a blush to the cheek of
the fastidious--he is grievously in error.
Nor am I going to boast; for I have made no conquests. I am in
no sense a hero. For many, very many years I have walked in a
pleasant garden, enjoying sweet odors and soothing spectacles; no
predetermined itinerary has controlled my course; I have wandered
whither I pleased, and very many times I have strayed so far into
the tangle-wood and thickets as almost to have lost my way. And
now it is my purpose to walk that pleasant garden once more,
inviting you to bear me company and to share with me what
satisfaction may accrue from an old man's return to old-time
places and old-time loves.
As a child I was serious-minded. I cared little for those sports
which usually excite the ardor of youth. To out-of-door games
and exercises I had particular aversion. I was born in a
southern latitude, but at the age of six years I went to live
with my grandmother in New Hampshire, both my parents having
fallen victims to the cholera. This change from the balmy
temperature of the South to the rigors of the North was not
agreeable to me, and I have always held it responsible for that
delicate health which has attended me through life.
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