I do not, however, pretend to say that I did not sometimes pine for the
recreations common to my age. Well do I remember the manifold
attractions of Barnard's Green. What longing glances I used to steal
towards the boisterous cricketers, when going gravely forth upon a
botanical walk with my father! With what eager curiosity have I not
lingered many a time before the entrance to a forbidden booth, and
scanned the scenic advertisement of a travelling show! Alas! how the
charms of study paled before those intervals of brief but bitter
temptation! What, then, was pathology compared to the pig-faced lady, or
the Materia Medica to Smith's Mexican Circus, patronized by all the
sovereigns of Europe? But my father was inexorable. He held that such
places were, to use his own words, "opened by swindlers for the ruin of
fools," and from one never-to-be-forgotten hour, when he caught me in
the very act of taking out my penny-worth at a portable peep-show, he
bound me over by a solemn promise (sealed by a whipping) never to repeat
the offence under any provocation or pretext whatsoever. I was a tiny
fellow in pinafores when this happened, but having once pledged my word,
I kept it faithfully through all the studious years that lay between six
and sixteen.

At sixteen an immense crisis occurred in my life. I fell in love. I had
been in love several times before--chiefly with the elder pupils at the
Miss Andrews' establishment; and once (but that was when I was very
young indeed) with the cook. This, however, was a much more romantic and
desperate affair. The lady was a Columbine by profession, and as
beautiful as an angel. She came down to our neighborhood with a
strolling company, and performed every evening, in a temporary theatre
on the green, for nearly three weeks. I used to steal out after dinner
when my father was taking his nap, and run the whole way, that I might