some divinity to whom I might offer up this most uneasy burden of
affections. I was at one time seriously enamored of a lady whom I saw
occasionally in my rides, reading at the window of a country-seat; and
actually serenaded her with my flute; when, to my confusion, I discovered
that she was old enough to be my mother. It was a sad damper to my romance;
especially as my father heard of it, and made it the subject of one of
those household jokes which he was apt to serve up at every meal-time.

I soon recovered from this check, however, but it was only to relapse into
a state of amorous excitement. I passed whole days in the fields, and along
the brooks; for there is something in the tender passion that makes us
alive to the beauties of nature. A soft sunshiny morning infused a sort of
rapture into my breast. I flung open my arms, like the Grecian youth in
Ovid, as if I would take in and embrace the balmy atmosphere. [Footnote:
Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book vii] The song of the birds melted me to
tenderness. I would lie by the side of some rivulet for hours, and form
garlands of the flowers on its banks, and muse on ideal beauties, and sigh
from the crowd of undefined emotions that swelled my bosom.

In this state of amorous delirium, I was strolling one morning along a
beautiful wild brook, which I had discovered in a glen. There was one place
where a small waterfall, leaping from among rocks into a natural basin,
made a scene such as a poet might have chosen as the haunt of some shy
Naiad. It was here I usually retired to banquet on my novels. In visiting
the place this morning I traced distinctly, on the margin of the basin,
which was of fine clear sand, the prints of a female foot of the most
slender and delicate proportions. This was sufficient for an imagination
like mine. Robinson Crusoe himself, when he discovered the print of a
savage foot on the beach of his lonely island, could not have been more
suddenly assailed with thick-coming fancies.