[The schoolmistress turned a little in her chair, and sat with her face directed partly towards me.—Half-mourning now;—purple ribbon. That breastpin she wears has _gray_ hair in it; her mother’s, no doubt;—I remember our landlady’s daughter telling me, soon after the schoolmistress came to board with us, that she had lately “buried a payrent.” That’s what made her look so pale,—kept the poor dying thing alive with her own blood. Ah! long illness is the real vampyrism; think of living a year or two after one is dead, by sucking the life-blood out of a frail young creature at one’s bedside! Well, souls grow white, as well as cheeks, in these holy duties one that goes in a nurse may come out an angel.—God bless all good women!—to their soft hands and pitying hearts we must all come at last!—The schoolmistress has a better color than when she came.—Too late! “It might have been.”—Amen!—How many thoughts go to a dozen heart-beats, sometimes! There was no long pause after my remark addressed to the company, but in that time I had the train of ideas and feelings I have just given flash through my consciousness sudden and sharp as the crooked red streak that springs out of its black sheath like the creese of a Malay in his death-race, and stabs the earth right and left in its blind rage. I don’t deny that there was a pang in it,—yes, a stab; but there was a prayer, too,—the “Amen” belonged to that.—Also, a vision of a four-story brick house, nicely furnished,—I actually saw many specific articles,—curtains, sofas, tables, and others, and could draw the patterns of them at this moment,—a brick house, I say, looking out on the water, with a fair parlor, and books and busts and pots of flowers and bird-cages, all complete; and at the window, looking on the water, two of us.—“Male and female created He them.”—These two were standing at the window, when a smaller shape that was playing near them looked up at me with such a look that I — — poured out a glass of water, drank it all down, and then continued.] I said I should like to tell you some things, such as people commonly never tell, about my early recollections. Should you like to hear them? Should we _like_ to hear them?—said the schoolmistress;—no, but we should love to. [The voice was a sweet one, naturally, and had something very pleasant in its tone, just then.—The four-story brick house, which had gone out like a transparency when the light behind it is quenched, glimmered again for a moment; parlor, books, busts, flower-pots, bird-cages, all complete,—and the figures as before.] We are waiting with eagerness, Sir,—said the divinity-student. [The transparency went out as if a flash of black lightning had struck it.] If you want to hear my confessions, the next thing—I said—is to know whether I can trust you with them. It is only fair to say that there are a great many people in the world that laugh at such things. _I_ think they are fools, but perhaps you don’t all agree with me.