"Fancies, bright as flowers of Eden, Often to his spirit come, Winging through the mind's brief sunlight, Glad as swallows flying home. Love is the true heart's religion! Let us not its power deny. But love on as flowers love sunshine, Or the happy birds the sky." Frank James was an outlaw. The smooth-faced, beardless youth who came from the school where he had pondered over the thoughts of Euripides, who had all Greece for a monument, to unite his fortune and venture his fate with Quantrell's band, had become a man, bearded and strong, daring and dangerous to his fellow-men. And the sprightly intellect that had enabled him to lead his class, and the youthful ardor which had conjured up classic forms among "the sacred relics of Almighty Rome," as his mental vision was turned back through the vista of many departed centuries, were now floundering in the muddy pools, and reveling in plots and schemes, sordid and debasing. He was not old in years, and yet he was ripe in experience. Year after year had chased each other down the steeps of time since Frank James became a soldier of the highways, a participant in the well-planned ambushment, and an executioner in the sudden surprise and fatal catastrophe to the enemy who came into the well-planned ambuscade, and he had witnessed unmoved the agony of victims when shaken by the throes of death. Could this man, whose hands were red with the crimson stains left there by the blood of victims; whose mind was made harsh and hard by years of struggle against organized society; whose conscience must have become seared by the long contact with the rude, rough elements in human nature; whose heart must have become callous by reason of the cruel scenes through which he had passed--could such a one have tender dreams of love? And yet we might ask, why not? The tender affinities of affection which sprang from psychological causes is one of the most beneficent schemes of God's benevolence, which traverses all space in its flights, and lives the visible token of man's divinity on earth and his hope in heaven. The hand that would thwart them would interrupt the course of laws based on eternal verities. The fact is, neither time, space, conditions, nor the recognized canons of social life, can induce or hinder the inception, growth, or maturity of a passion, which is acknowledged to be the most potent of all to which man is subject. Why, then, should Frank James not be smitten? In his wanderings he had met many fair ones. And beauty had smiled on him. But he knew that they were unacquainted with his name and antecedents, and so he refused to be led captive by these, whose love might turn to hate when they knew all.