My cousin JANE! Her form comes up before me, light and elastic and joyous, as though summoned for the first time, and as though it had not been my daily visitor for many a long year. Time writes no wrinkle on thy snowy brow, my first love! That glad smile knows no weariness, and I know no weariness in gazing on it. Those deep eyes, full of feeling; those soft words that thrill; I see and hear and feel them now, as I saw and heard and felt them first. Wilt thou never be tired of looking up to me, with that sweet, timid, confiding, tearful glance? Will the rising flush of thy cheek and thy subdued smile, be always fresh as now, and as in that hour when first we met? Thou hast been my companion, my unmurmuring, ever-present, unchanging companion, through many a dark time and stormy scene; and thou and the heart in which thou livest will die together. We met, my cousin Jane and I, when she was just putting on womanhood; had begun to find out the depths of her own heart, to doubt whether those depths ever could be filled, and to feel that unless they were, life would be but a blank. Not that there were not many willing enough to love her and be loved; the beauty of her form and character drew around her a crowd of admirers. But among them all, her nice perception saw that there was not one, of whom the exterior did not form by far the largest part of the man. Her admirers were good, honorable men; she respected and esteemed them; but still, gentle and timid and humble as she was, without knowing why, she felt that there was an impassable gulf between her and them. Their thoughts were not like her thoughts. Her social disposition led her much into their way, and though she tried to avoid it, she was told more than once, that the happiness or misery of her devoted lover depended on her smiles. It was a painful situation for one of her retiring and benevolent disposition, to be sure; and it is doubtful to which of the two, the lover or the mistress, every such rejection caused the keenest pang. But this was not the end of it. Malice soon prefixed to her name the epithet scornful; and among her school-girl friends there were some who always passed by on the other side. Poor girl! She wept bitter tears over these sneers and slights, for she had not studied the world enough to learn and despise its despicable things. Even then, dear girl! too, she tried to love all the world, that is, all her native village. And she succeeded, at least far enough to forgive them all, and thus to feel her own mind at peace and resigned. But there was a tinge of sadness left on her Grecian face after all; for to the young, when the out-stretched hand of kindly feeling is coldly put aside, the grief is as great as though the repulse were deserved.