youth.

One springtime in the sugar season my cousin, Gib Kelly, a boy of my own
age, visited me, staying two or three days. (He died last fall.) When he
went away I was minding the kettles in the woods, and as I saw him
crossing the bare fields in the March sunshine, his steps bent toward
the distant mountains, I still remember what a sense of loss came over
me, his comradeship had so brightened my enjoyment of the beautiful
days. He seemed to take my whole world with him, and on that and the
following day I went about my duties in the sap bush in a wistful and
pensive mood I had never before felt. I early showed the capacity for
comradeship. A boy friend could throw the witchery of romance over
everything. Oh, the enchanted days with my youthful mates! And I have
not entirely outgrown that early susceptibility. There are persons in
the world whose comradeship can still transmute the baser metal of
commonplace scenes and experiences into the purest gold of romance for
me. It is probably my feminine idiosyncrasies that explain all this.
Another unforgettable passion of comradeship in my youth I experienced
toward the son of a cousin, a boy four or five years old, or about half
my own age. One spring his mother and he were visiting at our house
eight or ten days. The child was very winsome and we soon became
inseparable companions. He was like a visitor from another sphere. I
frequently carried him on my back, and my heart opened to him more and
more each day. One day we started to come down a rather steep pair of
stairs from the hog-pen chamber; I had stepped down a few steps and
reached out to take little Harry in my arms, as he stood on the floor at
the head of the stairs, and carry him down, when in his joy he gave a
spring and toppled me over with him in my arms, and we brought up at the
bottom with our heads against some solid timbers. It was a severe shake-
up but hurt my heart more than it did my head because the boy was badly