"There is something more than beauty about her," he went on, taking pleasure in the interest I was showing. "She reminds Uncle Clem of a blooded horse, he says. I was inclined to take exceptions at this, but remembered that it was but an expression of real enthusiasm. She steps like a fawn, springs off the turf before she appears to have touched it. My first feeling toward her was one of gladness. I was selfish enough to believe, or to fancy that I believed, she had been created to delight me. And when I removed my eyes from her, I felt sad. Her eyes laughed at me and her lips seemed to say, I have found a fool. At the gate she had jumped off a horse and was in a riding habit when she came running into the room. She was in no wise embarrassed by me. After a while she said that she was hungry and I was startled. I could not conceive of that creature sitting down to vulgar bread, and I was stupid enough to say that I didn't see how she existed in the winter, with the roses all gone. I knew she must eat roses. And she smote me hard by replying that cabbages came on about the time roses gave out. This tickled her mother immensely and she shook her fat sides and fanned herself with the wing of a guinea hen. I am getting all my visits mixed, perhaps, but I am giving you a collection of impressions. The mother is ignorant and the father is coarse. He made money driving mules to New Orleans and bought the Jamison farm. Yes, her mother and father are plebeian, but the girl is a patrician of the rarest type. She told me that she had just come from school. I asked her if she were sure she had not just come from a gallery of famous portraits. This tickled her and my blood danced in rhythm with her laugh. Every line of my prose, law, oratory, turned up crackling like drying leaves and was blown away, but all the poetry I had read remained, blooming anew. Now you know how bad off I am, and you may congratulate yourself that you can't follow me into this new domain. Oh, what is so delicious as a fool's love affair! But I wonder if she's going to have fun with me and then tell me to go. No, sir, I'm going to win her love if actions, words and devotion count for anything. Dan, she has given me new blood. Good thing that something has happened, for this quiet, expectant life is almost unbearable." "What's that?" cried Mr. Clem, stepping into the room. "Quiet life, do I hear? Well, it won't always be this quiet, my son. Lincoln will be nominated for the presidency as sure as you live, and the chances are that he'll get in, and then what? War, my boy; red-whiskered war. The South is as sore as a stone-bruise and won't accept an abolitionist. Our high aristocrats have been hankering a long time for a fight and they are going to get it." "Let it come," replied Young Master, shoving his hands into his pockets. "It will be a tournament, music, smiles and flowers. Then we'll all eat out of the same bowl."