formal, and awkward letter it was, I assure you. I am positive
I addressed her as "Dear Madam," and started off with some sentence
from "The Complete Letter-Writer," so impressed was I that there
was a best way to do this thing, and that the book pointed it out.
Mary's reply was, "To my absent, but not forgotten friend," and was
simple and natural as girls' letters usually are. My Grandfather
Kelly died that season, and I recall that I wrote a letter of
condolence to my people, modeled upon one in the book. How absurd
and stilted and unreal it must have sounded to them!


Oh, how crude and callow and obtuse I was at that time, full of
vague and tremulous aspirations and awakenings, but undisciplined,
uninformed, with many inherited incapacities and obstacles to weigh
me down. I was extremely bashful, had no social aptitude, and was
likely to stutter when anxious or embarrassed, yet I seem to have
made a good impression. I was much liked in school and out, and
was fairly happy. I seem to see sunshine over all when I look back
there. But it was a long summer to me. I had never been from home
more than a day or two at a time before, and I became very homesick.
Oh, to walk in the orchard back of the house, or along the road, or
to see the old hills again--what a Joy it would have been! But I
stuck it out till my term ended in October, and then went home,
taking a young fellow from the district (a brother of some girls
I fancied) with me. I took back nearly all my wages, over fifty
dollars, and with this I planned to pay my way at Hedding Literary
Institute, in the adjoining county of Greene, during the coming
winter term.

I left home for the school late in November, riding the thirty miles