"The difficulty would be in finding victims," I answered. "The inhabitants of the town where I reside do not number more than two or three thousand." "Oh! I would make it populous. I would draw worshippers from the four points of the earth,--and yet it would be a greater triumph to subdue one proud, hitherto impregnable heart." Her eyes flashed like gunpowder as she uttered this, _sotto voce_ it is true, but still loud enough to be heard half across the room. "Goodby," she suddenly exclaimed, "they are beckoning me; I must go; try to like me, precious creature; I shall be quite miserable if you do not." Then passing her arm round me, an arm firm, polished, and white as ivory, she gave me a loud, emphatic kiss, laughed, and left me almost as much confused as if one of the other sex had taken the same liberty. "Is she," thought I, "a young man in disguise?" CHAPTER XXII. What am I writing? Sometimes I throw down the pen, saying to myself, "it is all folly, all verbiage. There is a history within worth perusing, but I cannot bring it forth to light. I turn over page after page with the fingers of thought. I see characters glowing or darkened with passion,--lines alternately bright and shadowy, distinct and obscure, and it seems an easy thing to make a transcript of these for the outward world." Easy! it requires the recording angel's pen to register the history of the human heart. "The thoughts that breathe, the thoughts that burn," how can they be expressed? The mere act of clothing them in words makes them grow cold and dull. The molten gold, the fused iron hardens and chills in the forming mould. Easy! "Oh yes," the critic says, "it is an easy thing to write; only follow nature, and you cannot err." But nature is as broad as the universe, as high as the heavens, and as deep as the seas. It is but a small portion we can condense even on hundreds of pages of foolscap paper. If that portion be of love, the cold philosopher turns away in disdain and talks of romantic maids and moonstruck boys, as if the subject were fit alone for them. And yet love is the great motive principle of nature, the burning sun of the social system. Blot it out, and every other feeling and passion would sink in the darkness of eternal night. Byron's awful dream would be realized,--darkness would indeed be the universe. They who praise a writer for omitting love from the page which purports to be a record of life, would praise God for creating a world, over whose sunless realms no warmth or light was diffused, (if such a creation were possible,)--a world without flowers or music, without hope or joy. But as the sun is only an emanation from the first great fountain of light and glory, so love is but an effluence from the eternal source of love divine.