I never had a friend! Did any human creature twenty years old ever write that before, unless he did it in a spirit of bitterness because he was out of humor with his world? Yet I can say it, knowing it to be the truth. My father and I are one, the oak and its branch, the fern and its fruitage; but for somebody to be the mirror of my own thoughts, tantalizingly strange, intoxicatingly new, where shall I look? Ah, but I know! I will create him from my own longings. He shall be born of the blood and sinew of my brain and heart. Stand forth, beautiful one, made in the image of my fancy, and I will tell thee all--all I am ashamed to tell my father, and tired of imprisoning in my own soul. What shall I call thee? Friend: that will be enough, all-comprehending and rich in joy. To-day I have needed thee more than ever, though it is only to-day that I learned to recognize the need. All the morning a sweet languor held me, warm, like the sun, and touched with his fervor, so that I felt within me darts of impelling fire. I sat in the woods by the spring, my eyes on the dancing shadows at my feet, not thinking, not willing, yet expectant. I felt as if something were coming, and that I must be ready to meet it when the great moment should strike. Suddenly my heart beat high in snatches of rhythm; my feet stirred, my ears woke to the whir of wings, and my eyes to flickering shade. My whole self was whelmed and suffocated in a wave of sweet delight. And then it was that my heart cried out for another heart to beat beside it and make harmony for the two; then it was that thou, dear one, wast born from my thought. I am not disloyal in seeking companionship. My father is myself. Let me say that over and over. When I tell him my fancies, he smiles sadly, saying they are the buds of youth, born never to flower. To him Nature is goddess and mother; he turns to her for sustenance by day, and lies on her bosom at night. After death he will be content to rest in her arms and become one flesh with her mould. But I--I! O, is it because I am young; and will the days chill out this strange, sweet fever, as they have in him? Two years ago--yes, a year--I had no higher joy than to throw myself, body and soul, into motion: to row, fish, swim, to listen, in a dream of happiness, while my father read old Homer to me in the evening, or we masterfully swept through duets--'cello and violin--that my sleep was too dreamless to repeat to me. And now the very world is changed; help me to understand it, my friend; or, if I am to blame, help me to conquer myself. II