my performances as have been seen by friendly eyes have been looked upon
as mediocre enough, I still believe, that if ever I could win a lasting
reputation, it would be through that channel. Love usually accompanies
poetry, and, in my case, there was no exception to the rule.

"There was a slender, but pleasant brook, about two miles from our
house, to which one or two of us were accustomed, in the summer days, to
repair to bathe and saunter away our leisure hours. To this favourite
spot I one day went alone, and crossing a field which led to the brook,
I encountered two ladies, with one of whom, having met her at some house
in the neighbourhood, I had a slight acquaintance. We stopped to speak
to each other, and I saw the face of her companion. Alas! were I to live
ten thousand lives, there would never be a moment in which I could be
alone--nor sleeping, and that face not with me!

"My acquaintance introduced us to each other. I walked home with them to
the house of Miss D----(so was the strange, who was also the younger
lady named.) The next day I called upon her; the acquaintance thus
commenced did not droop; and, notwithstanding our youth--for Lucy D----
was only seventeen, and I nearly a year younger--we soon loved, and with
a love, which, full of poesy and dreaming, as from our age it
necessarily must have been, was not less durable, nor less heart-felt,
than if it had arisen from the deeper and more earthly sources in which
later life only hoards its affections.

"Oh, God! how little did I think of what our young folly entailed upon
us! We delivered ourselves up to the dictates of our hearts, and forgot
that there was a future. Neither of us had any ulterior design; we did
not think--poor children that we were--of marriage, and settlements, and
consent of relations. We touched each other's hands, and were happy; we