was to be a carpenter, there was a good one in town, to whom I was
forthwith apprenticed for a year. During that time, incidentally,
I might make up my mind, upon the evidence of my reduced standing,
that school was, after all, to be preferred. And thus it was that
I came to be a working boy helping build her proud father's factory
at the time I fell head over heels in love with sweet Elizabeth.
Certainly I had taken no easy road to the winning of my way and
my bride; so reasoned the town, which presently took note of my
infatuation. But, then, it laughed, there was time enough. I was
fifteen and she was not thirteen. There was time enough, oh, yes!
Only I did not think so. My courtship proceeded at a tumultuous
pace, which first made the town laugh, then put it out of patience
and made some staid matrons express the desire to box my ears
soundly. It must be owned that if courting were generally done on
the plan I adopted, there would be little peace and less safety
all around. When she came playing among the lumber where we were
working, as she naturally would, danger dogged my steps. I carry a
scar on the shin-bone made with an adze I should have been minding
when I was looking after her. The forefinger on my left hand has
a stiff joint. I cut that off with an axe when she was dancing on
a beam close by. Though it was put on again by a clever surgeon
and kept on, I have never had the use of it since. But what did a
finger matter, or ten, when she was only there! Once I fell off the
roof when I must crane my neck to see her go around the corner. But
I hardly took note of those things, except to enlist her sympathy by
posing as a wounded hero with my arm in a sling at the dancing-school
which I had joined on purpose to dance with her. I was the biggest
boy there, and therefore first to choose a partner, and I remember
even now the snickering of the school when I went right over and
took Elizabeth. She flushed angrily, but I didn't care. That was