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