and saved her at the risk of your life, and have been terribly burned
and injured! Anything to serve her. Even in little things that was
so sweet. How you would watch her, spaniel-like, to anticipate her
slightest wish! How proud you were to do her bidding! How delightful
it was to be ordered about by her! To devote your whole life to her
and to never think of yourself seemed such a simple thing. You would
go without a holiday to lay a humble offering at her shrine, and felt
more than repaid if she only deigned to accept it. How precious to
you was everything that she had hallowed by her touch--her little
glove, the ribbon she had worn, the rose that had nestled in her hair
and whose withered leaves still mark the poems you never care to look
at now.

And oh, how beautiful she was, how wondrous beautiful! It was as some
angel entering the room, and all else became plain and earthly. She
was too sacred to be touched. It seemed almost presumption to gaze at
her. You would as soon have thought of kissing her as of singing
comic songs in a cathedral. It was desecration enough to kneel and
timidly raise the gracious little hand to your lips.

Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and
pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of
truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble
longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when
we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we
believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no
living creature but ourselves!