The Crayon Papers

into the room. She was seated with her back to the door, looking out at the window, and did not hear my approach. I tapped her chair, and as she turned and looked up, I snatched as sweet a kiss as ever was stolen, and vanished in a twinkling. The next moment I was on horseback, galloping homeward; my very ears tingling at what I had done.
    “On my return home I sold my horse, and turned everything to cash; and found, with the remains of the paternal purse, that I had nearly four hundred dollars; a little capital which I resolved to manage with the strictest economy.
    “It was hard parting with old Miller, who had been like a father to me; it cost me, too, something of a struggle to give up the free, independent wild-wood life I had hitherto led; but I had marked out my course, and had never been one to flinch or turn back.
    “I footed it sturdily to Bardstown; took possession of the quarters for which I had bargained, shut myself up, and set to work with might and main to study. But what a task I had before me! I had everything to learn; not merely law, but all the elementary branches of knowledge. I read and read, for sixteen hours out of the four-and-twenty; but the more I read the more I became aware of my own ignorance, and shed bitter tears over my deficiency. It seemed as if the wilderness of knowledge expanded and grew more perplexed as I advanced. Every height gained only revealed a wider region to be traversed, and nearly filled me with despair. I grew moody, silent, and unsocial, but studied on doggedly and incessantly. The only person with whom I held any conversation was the worthy man in whose house I was quartered. He was honest and well meaning, but perfectly ignorant, and I believe would have liked me much better if I had not been so much addicted to reading. He considered all books filled with lies and impositions, and seldom could look into one without finding something to rouse his spleen. Nothing put him into a greater passion than the assertion that the world turned on its own axis every four-and-twenty hours. He swore it was an outrage upon common sense. ‘Why, if it did,’ said he, ‘there would not be a drop of water in the well by morning, and all the milk and cream in the dairy would be turned topsy-turvy! And then to talk of the earth going round the sun! How do they know it? I’ve seen the sun rise every morning and set every evening for more than thirty years. They must not talk to me about the earth’s going round the sun!’
    “At another time he was in a perfect fret at being told the distance between the sun and moon. ‘How can any one tell the distance?’ cried he. ‘Who surveyed it? who carried the chain? By Jupiter! they only talk this way before me to annoy me. But then there’s some people of sense who give in to this cursed humbug! There’s Judge Broadnax, now, one of the best lawyers we have; isn’t it surprising he should believe in such stuff? Why, sir, the other day I heard him talk of the distance from a star he called Mars to the sun! He must have got it out of one or other of those confounded books he’s so fond of reading; a book some impudent fellow has written, who knew nobody could swear the distance was more or less.’
    “For my own part, feeling my own deficiency in scientific lore, I never ventured to unsettle his conviction that the sun made his daily circuit round the earth; and for aught I said to the contrary, he lived and died in that belief.
    “I had been about a year at Bardstown, living thus studiously and reclusely, when, as I was one day walking the street, I met two young girls, in one of whom I immediately recalled the little beauty whom I had kissed so impudently. She blushed up to the eyes, and so did I; but we both passed on with further sign of recognition. This second glimpse of her, however, caused an odd fluttering about my heart. I could not get her out of my thoughts for days. She quite interfered with my studies. I tried to think of her as a mere child, but it would not do; she had improved in beauty, and was tending toward womanhood; and then I myself was but little better than a stripling. However, I did not attempt to seek after her, or even to find out who she was, but returned doggedly to my books. By degrees she faded from my thoughts, or if she did cross them occasionally, it was only to increase my despondency; for I feared that with all my exertions, I should never be able to fit myself for the bar, or enable myself