The success was so great, and the curiosity, not only of the Cincinnati world but of the farmers round about and their families, was so eager, that the press of spectators was inconveniently great, and M. Dorfeuille began to fear that his properties might be damaged by indiscreet desires to touch as well as see. So Powers arranged a slight metal rod as a barrier between the show and the spectators, and contrived to charge it with electricity, while an announcement, couched in terrible and mystic terms and in verse, by my mother, to the effect that an awful doom awaited any mortal rash enough to approach the mysteries of the nether world too nearly, was appended to the doors and walls. The astonishment and dismay felt, and the laughter provoked, by those who were rash enough to do so, may be imagined! Upon the whole those autumn and winter months passed pleasantly, and have left pleasant recollections in my memory. Doubtless there were many causes of anxiety for my elders; but to the best of my remembrance they touched us young people very lightly. We had many more or less agreeable acquaintances, and I have a vivid recollection of the pleasure I received from the fact that they all belonged to types that were altogether new to me--if indeed it could be said of people, to me so apparently unclassifiable, that they belonged to any type at all. The cleverest among them was a Dr. Price, a very competent physician with a large practice, a foolish friendly little wife and a pair of pretty daughters. He was a jovial, florid, rotund little man who professed, more even, as I remember, to my astonishment than my horror, perfect Atheism. His wife and daughters used to go to church without apparently producing the slightest interruption of domestic harmony. “La! the Doctor don’t think anything more of the Bible than of an old newspaper!” Mrs. Price would say; “but then doctors, you know, they have their own opinions!” And the girls used to say, “Papa is an Atheist,” just as they would have said of the multiform persuasions of their acquaintances, “Mr. This is a Baptist,” and “Mrs. That is a Methodist.” And I remember well the confusion and displacement occasioned in my mind by finding that Dr. Price did not seem on the whole to be an abandoned man, and enjoyed to a high degree the respect of his townsmen. The two pretty daughters, girls of eighteen or nineteen, used to have at their house frequent dances. We were constant and welcome guests, but alas! I was not--either then or ever since--a dancer; the reason being precisely the same as that which prevented my fighting at Winchester, as above recorded. I was too shy! In other words I had too low an opinion of myself, of my performance as a dancer, should I attempt it, and above all of my acceptability as a partner, ever to overcome my diffidence.