CHAPTER II.


All this had been so sudden that, to use the trite phrase,--for no other
is so expressive,--it was like a dream. I felt an absolute, an
imperious want of solitude, of the open air. The swell of gratitude
almost stifled me; the room did not seem large enough for my big heart.
In early youth, if we find it difficult to control our feelings, so we
find it difficult to vent them in the presence of others. On the spring
side of twenty, if anything affects us, we rush to lock ourselves up in
our room, or get away into the streets or the fields; in our earlier
years we are still the savages of Nature, and we do as the poor brute
does: the wounded stag leaves the herd, and if there is anything on a
dog's faithful heart, he slinks away into a corner.

Accordingly, I stole out of the hotel and wandered through the streets,
which were quite deserted. It was about the first hour of dawn,--the
most comfortless hour there is, especially in London! But I only felt
freshness in the raw air, and soothing in the desolate stillness. The
love my uncle inspired was very remarkable in its nature; it was not
like that quiet affection with which those advanced in life must usually
content themselves, but connected with the more vivid interest that
youth awakens. There was in him still so much of viva, city and fire,
in his errors and crotchets so much of the self-delusion of youth, that
one could scarce fancy him other than young. Those Quixotic,
exaggerated notions of honor, that romance of sentiment which no