If childhood is the sunrise of life, youth is the heyday of life's ruddy June. It is the sweet solstice in life's early summer, which puts forth the fragrant bud and blossom of sin e'er its bitter fruits ripen and turn to ashes on the lips of age. It is the happy transition period, when long legs, and loose joints, and verdant awkwardness, first stumble on the vestibule of manhood. Did you never observe him shaving and scraping his pimpled face till it resembled a featherless goose, reaping nothing but lather, and dirt, and a little intangible fuzz? That is the first symptom of love. Did you never observe him wrestling with a pair of boots two numbers too small, as Jacob wrestled with the angel? That is another symptom of love. His callous heel slowly and painfully yields to the pressure of his perspiring paroxysms until his feet are folded like fans and driven home in the pinching leather; and as he sits at church with them hid under the bench, his uneasy squirms are symptoms of the tortures of the infernal regions, and the worm that dieth not; but that is only the penalty of loving. When he begins to wander through the fragrant meadows and talk to himself among the buttercups and clover blossoms, it is a sure sign that the golden shaft of the winged god has sped from its bended bow. Love's archer has shot a poisoned arrow which wounds but never kills. The sweet venom has done its work. The fever of the amorous wound drives the red current bounding through his veins, and his brain now reels with the delirium of the tender passion. His soul is wrapped in visions of dreamy black eyes peeping out from under raven curls, and cheeks like gardens of roses. To him the world is transformed into a blooming Eden, and she is its only Eve. He hears her voice in the sound of the laughing waters, the fluttering of her heart in the summer evening's last sigh that shuts the rose; and he sits on the bank of the river all day long and writes poetry to her. Thus he writes:

Thus he lives and loves, and writes poetry by day, and tosses on his bed at night, like the restless sea, and dreams, and dreams, and dreams, until, in the ecstacy of his dream, he grabs a pillow.

One bright summer day, a rural youth took his sweetheart to a Baptist baptizing; and, in addition to his verdancy and his awkwardness, he stuttered most distressingly. The singing began on the bank of the stream; and he left his sweetheart in the buggy, in the shade of a tree near by, and wandered alone in the crowd. Standing unconsciously among those who were to be baptized, the old parson mistook him for one of the converts, and seized him by the arm and marched him into the water. He began to protest: "ho-ho-hold on p-p-p-parson, y-y-y-you're ma-ma-makin' a mi-mi-mistake!!!" "Don't be alarmed my son, come right in," said the parson. And he led him to the middle of the stream. The poor fellow made one final desperate effort to explain—"p-p-p-p-parson, l-l-l-l-let me explain!" But the parson coldly said: "Close your mouth and eyes, my son!" And he soused him under the water. After he was thoroughly baptized the old parson led him to the bank, the muddy water trickling down his face. He was "diked" in his new seersucker suit, and when the sun struck it, it began to draw up. The legs of his pants drew up to his knees; his sleeves drew up to his elbows; his little sack coat yanked up under his arms. And as he stood there trembling and shivering, a good old sister approached him, and taking him by the hand said: "God bless you, my son, [109]
[110] how do you feel?" Looking, in his agony, at his blushing sweetheart behind her fan, he replied in his anguish: "I fe-fe-fe-feel l-l-l-l-like a d-d-d-d-durned f-f-f-f-fool!"

If I were called upon to drink a toast to life's happiest period, I would hold up the sparkling wine, and say: "Here is to youth, that sweet, Seidlitz powder period, when two souls with scarcely a single thought, meet and blend in one; when a voice, half gosling, half calliope, rasps the first sickly confession of puppy love into the ear of a blue-sashed maiden at the picnic in the grove!" But when she returns his little greasy photograph, accompanied by a little perfumed note, expressing the hope that he will think of her only as a sister, his paradise is wrecked, and his puppy love is swept into the limbo of things that were, the school boy's tale, the wonder of an hour.

But wait till the shadows have a little longer grown. Wait till the young lawyer comes home from college, spouting Blackstone, and Kent, and Ram on facts. Wait till the young doctor returns from the university, with his whiskers and his diploma, to tread the paths of glory, "that lead but to the grave." Wait till society gives welcome in the brilliant ball, and the swallow-tail coat, and the patent leather pumps whirl with the decollette and white slippers till the stars are drowning in the light of morning. Wait till the graduate staggers from the giddy hall, in full evening dress, singing as he staggers:

It is then that "somebody's darling" has reached the full tide of his glory as a fool.