Of the few women of America who looked upon me with favor, there was one--Ellen--whom I really loved, I think; for of all the girls, the mention of her name, alone, gave me that peculiar feeling in which instinctive impulse blends undefinably and perpetually with a sense of reverent respect; or, rather, with a sense of some unworthiness of self. Ellen died before I had known her a year. I thought afterwards, like any other youngster, that I loved half-a-dozen different girls; but, even in maturer years, second love is a poor imitation. Say what you will about second love, my boy, in the breast of him truly a man, it is but an _imperium in imperio_--a flower on the grave of the first. There was one young woman of America in our village, my boy, about whom the chaps teased me not a little; and I might, perhaps, have been teased into matrimony, like many another unfortunate, but for the example of a Salsbury chap I met one night in one of the village stores. He was a Yankee chap with much southwestern experience, my boy, and when he heard the lads teasing me about a woman, he hoisted his heels upon the counter, and says he: "Anybody'd think that creation was born with a frock on, to hear the way you younkers talk woman. Darn the she-critters!" says he, shutting his jack-knife with a clash. "I'd rayther be as lonesome as a borryed pup, than see a piece of caliker as big as a pancake. What's wimmen but a tarnation bundle of gammon and petticoats. Powerful! Be you married folks, stranger?" "Not yet," says I.