[Illustration: THE PARADISE OF YOUTH.]
If childhood is the sunrise of life, youth is the heyday of life's ruddy
June. It is the sweet solstice in life's early summer, which puts forth
the fragrant bud and blossom of sin e'er its bitter fruits ripen and
turn to ashes on the lips of age. It is the happy transition period,
when long legs, and loose joints, and verdant awkwardness, first stumble
on the vestibule of manhood. Did you never observe him shaving and
scraping his pimpled face till it resembled a featherless goose, reaping
nothing but lather, and dirt, and a little intangible fuzz? That is the
first symptom of love. Did you never observe him wrestling with a pair
of boots two numbers too small, as Jacob wrestled with the angel? That
is another symptom of love. His callous heel slowly and painfully yields
to the pressure of his perspiring paroxysms until his feet are folded
like fans and driven home in the pinching leather; and as he sits at
church with them hid under the bench, his uneasy squirms are symptoms of
the tortures of the infernal regions, and the worm that dieth not; but
that is only the penalty of loving. When he begins to wander through the
fragrant meadows and talk to himself among the buttercups and clover
blossoms, it is a sure sign that the golden shaft of the winged god has
sped from its bended bow. Love's archer has shot a poisoned arrow which
wounds but never kills. The sweet venom has done its work. The fever of
the amorous wound drives the red current bounding through his veins, and
his brain now reels with the delirium of the tender passion. His soul is
wrapped in visions of dreamy black eyes peeping out from under raven
curls, and cheeks like gardens of roses. To him the world is transformed
into a blooming Eden, and _she_ is its only Eve. He hears her voice in
the sound of the laughing waters, the fluttering of her heart in the
summer evening's last sigh that shuts the rose; and he sits on the bank
of the river all day long and writes poetry to her. Thus he writes:
"As I sit by this river's crystal wave,
Whose flow'ry banks its waters lave,
Me-thinks I see in its glassy mirror,
A face which to me, than life is dearer.
Oh, 'tis the face of my Gwendolin,
As pure as an angel, free from sin.
It looks into mine with one sweet eye,
While the other is turned to the starry sky.
Could I the ocean's bulk contain,
Could I but drink the watery main,
I'd scarce be half as full of the sea,
As my heart is full of love for thee!"
Thus he lives and loves, and writes poetry by day, and tosses on his bed
at night, like the restless sea, and dreams, and dreams, and dreams,
until, in the ecstacy of his dream, he grabs a pillow.
One bright summer day, a rural youth took his sweetheart to a Baptist
baptizing; and, in addition to his verdancy and his awkwardness, he
stuttered most distressingly. The singing began on the bank of the
stream; and he left his sweetheart in the buggy, in the shade of a tree
near by, and wandered alone in the crowd. Standing unconsciously among
those who were to be baptized, the old parson mistook him for one of the
converts, and seized him by the arm and marched him into the water. He
began to protest: "ho-ho-hold on p-p-p-parson, y-y-y-you're ma-ma-makin'
a mi-mi-mistake!!!" "Don't be alarmed my son, come right in," said the
parson. And he led him to the middle of the stream. The poor fellow made
one final desperate effort to explain--"p-p-p-p-parson, l-l-l-l-let me
explain!" But the parson coldly said: "Close your mouth and eyes, my
son!" And he soused him under the water. After he was thoroughly
baptized the old parson led him to the bank, the muddy water trickling
down his face. He was "diked" in his new seersucker suit, and when the
sun struck it, it began to draw up. The legs of his pants drew up to his
knees; his sleeves drew up to his elbows; his little sack coat yanked up
under his arms. And as he stood there trembling and shivering, a good
old sister approached him, and taking him by the hand said: "God bless
you, my son, how do you feel?" Looking, in his agony, at his blushing
sweetheart behind her fan, he replied in his anguish: "I fe-fe-fe-feel
l-l-l-l-like a d-d-d-d-durned f-f-f-f-fool!"
[Illustration: THE SEERSUCKER YOUTH AT THE BAPTIZING.]
If I were called upon to drink a toast to life's happiest period,
I would hold up the sparkling wine, and say: "Here is to youth, that
sweet, Seidlitz powder period, when two souls with scarcely a single
thought, meet and blend in one; when a voice, half gosling, half
calliope, rasps the first sickly confession of puppy love into the
ear of a blue-sashed maiden at the picnic in the grove!" But when she
returns his little greasy photograph, accompanied by a little perfumed
note, expressing the hope that he will think of her only as a sister,
his paradise is wrecked, and his puppy love is swept into the limbo
of things that were, the school boy's tale, the wonder of an hour.
But wait till the shadows have a little longer grown. Wait till the
young lawyer comes home from college, spouting Blackstone, and Kent, and
Ram on facts. Wait till the young doctor returns from the university,
with his whiskers and his diploma, to tread the paths of glory, "that
lead but to the grave." Wait till society gives welcome in the brilliant
ball, and the swallow-tail coat, and the patent leather pumps whirl with
the decollette and white slippers till the stars are drowning in the
light of morning. Wait till the graduate staggers from the giddy hall,
in full evening dress, singing as he staggers:
"After the ball is over, after the break of morn,
After the dancer's leavin', after the stars are gone;
Many a heart is aching, if we could read them all--
Many the hopes that are vanished, after the ball."
[Illustration: AFTER THE BALL.]
It is then that "somebody's darling" has reached the full tide of his
glory as a fool.