Anonymous
A summer amour
The thorns which often picks us most
Are found 'moung sweetest flowers.
Friend Clara:
An incident in my boyish life tonight passes before me in all the tinting of a panoramic view; and as my thoughts run back over the checkered pathway of forty years, which has sprinkled my hair with gray, filled my life with thorns and orange blossoms, to a month that has left its imprint on my whole life, I wish that I possessed the power to reproduce the picture in all its colors and do justice to the work which, at your request, I undertake to- night. I regret that the favor you ask is one which compels me to write of myself. To a modest man, lacking that phrenological enlargement that as a rule in men and women predominates to such a lamentable degree, the position is embarrassing; and in the perusal of this I trust your eye will rest on this unpleasant character as little as possible.
I was born neath a warm sun and southern skies, where the air was freighted with blended odor of the magnolia and jasmine that heightened the senses; where everything had its bud and blossom almost at its birth; where the dreamy languor of the voluptuary seemed inherent in all, where even in those which here in the North would be termed children, the sexual spark only waited for contact to flame up in its power; where girls where mothers at thirteen and grandmas at thirty; but up to my eleventh year I had known only books and sketching; a sweet-tempered, linen-dressed boy, who lived out of the sunshine and ignored the innocent deviltries of youth; who looked upon girls as horrid; whose life was rounded by a pony, books, pictures, and the flowers in the conservatory. But changes for good or evil take place in every life. It came to mine; and on that sweet-sighing summer day in my twelfth year, when Cupid threw apart the silken curtains, revealing beauties of which I had not even dreamed, my hand lost its cunning; to books I said farewell and ambition was dead. That was a day of fate. How bitterly have I cursed it since; how cursed her, who snatched me from my little heaven with its delightful anticipations and chaperoned me through the hot-house of passion; where every beautiful flower was filled with a subtle poison which raked the nerves, sapped the life, and deadened the brain. My introduction to the pleasures and mysteries that have ever been associated with the couch of love — the keen relish for which has blasted the family hearthstone and overthrown empires — was not entrusted to a novice; no timid simpering girl, taking her first steps toward the realization of the anticipation of forbidden pleasures, but to a woman; a woman of thirty, who being an apt pupil under the skillful manipulations and teachings of a husband for a term of years, had herself become a preceptor in all those delicate points that surrounded and amour with such delights and rosy tints. how plainly do I see her to-night! How much keener my appreciation of the wonderful piece of anatomy that time only still deeper imprints upon my memory; the standard, by which from that time all female perfections and loveliness has been gauged. Ah! She is before me again, and this time unveiled. Look at her! Is she not beautiful? Note the poise of her head, from which her glinted, golden hair falls in such a wealth. See those amber eyes; those wonderfully chiseled lips, so red, pulpy, and moist; her fair cheeks tinted by their reflection. Her shoulders — how perfectly and exquisitely molded — rounded with the same finish of her beautiful swelling globes, so daintily pinked and tipped. What belly, back and hips ever had the graceful curves of thine? And you! Rounded arms, white swelling thighs, and full-dimpled knees (in your warm, fond pressure of years ago I feel you again to-night) was the mold broken with your completion?
Gone? Yes! Only in memory now
We all of things
For the first time taste;
Whether sorrow, pain, or bliss.
The house on the sound, t hose with whom I lived had taken for the summer months, was very small, only large enough for three and the servant, but it was delightfully situated in a perfect Eden; where all was soft air, perfumes, flowers, and singing birds; and as I recall it now, just the spot for lovers and the complete enjoyment of stolen sweets. One day a carriage rolled up the gravel walk to the door. A beautiful woman was handed out and everything tended to show that we had an unexpected guest. As I stood there with my black, long, curling hair neath a broad palmetto hat, dressed in white pantaloons and a green jacket with brass buttons, my face reddened with the suns rays on the water, she stooped down and kissed me very tenderly many times; and as I remember now they produced a very different sensation from any kisses I had ever known before — I like them; but I did not know why it was that I hung around her all day and thought her so nice. After she had visited all the forenoon in the house, during which time I had learned that she was the wife of a gentleman who was a friend of my father, but who had gone to California for his health — I am willing to gamble ten now that he had consumption — she took my hand and we went for a stroll around the place, along the beach and up into the lovely woods, with its tangled grasses and wild flowers. What to me then was all that snowy linen; those beautiful ruffled skirts, as she pulled them up to step over some stick or bramble — she did not seem to care how high — revealed that even a cigar- store Indian would lose his head at the sight of them. Ah! how many thousands have longed to live over again the first part of a life with the knowledge they had acquired in the last. Could this happen to me, what a different color the picture of which I am writing would have.
In a dense shade, where the hot sun could not penetrate, we sat down on a log; and after she had taken off my hat and ran her dainty white hands through my hair, she placed my head in her lap and, pulling me close to her panting bosom, she placed her pretty lips on mine and hel them there with her eyes shut until sometimes I stifled and almost lost my breath; then she would take her lips away while her eyes sparkled and her cheeks reddened clear to her hair. There was something about it that I liked, for I would ask her to do it again; a; and she, exclaiming 'bless my little man,' would press me to her lips again and kiss me until my lips and face were all wet from her lips. Each attack and each pressure seemed to create for me some new and delightful sensation I had not known before; and then, where my little pantaloons buttoned in front, I had a pain, and a great hard lump that hurt me; and in my innocence I told her about it. 'Let me see,' she said kindly; one of her hands, that had so many pretty rings on her fingers, stole down and unbuttoned my pants; and then, what I had never seen more than two inches long and soft as a baby's flesh, was standing out full five inches and terribly swollen. I was awfully frightened at the sight and the pain, but she took it in her hand, telling me 'it was no matter,' and I seemed to get better right away.
Then she kissed it four or five times and bit it gently; after which she put it back and buttoned my pantaloons again.
I wanted her to hold it some more, but she said 'no,' that we must go back; and before we reached the house she made me promise on my life that I would never tell what she had done or should choose to do. I would have done anything for her, for I tell you she had made a willing slave of me in the few hours that had passed following her arrival.
During the time between tea and the hour for retiring, and while she was in conversation with the older one, I hung about her knees playing with her beautiful hands and looking into her wonderful eyes; but I soon felt that I was not as much to her as I had been when out in the woods; and signifying my determination to retire I was informed at the foot of the stairs that I was to sleep across the bed at the foot.
I took off my clothes, then my regular evening sponge off, put on my little short night shirt, and then turning back the coverlet very carefully, as per last instructions, placed me a pillow and crept in. I lay for some time thinking of my afternoon's experience, and the strange and delightful sensations that had been awakened by my newly found acquaintance; but I could not solve the problem; and, while wishing that night would be very short so that when day came she would take me walking again, I fell asleep.
I do not know how long I slept, but I seemed to be dreaming that some one was tickling one of my ribs; and I
