But I had gained a friend, and that was a sweet recompense, sweeter

to me, by far, than it is found or felt by schoolboys usually. None

could know or comprehend the force of my attachment--my dependence

upon the attachment of which I felt assured!--none but those who,

with an earnest, impetuous nature like my own--doomed to denial

from the first, and treated with injustice and unkindness--has felt

the pang of a worse privation from the beginning;--the privation

of that sustenance, which is the "very be all and end all" of its

desire and its life--and the denial of which chills and repels its

fervor--throws it back in despondency upon itself--fills it with

suspicion, and racks it with a never-ceasing conflict between its

apprehension and its hopes.

Edgerton supplied a vacuum which my bosom had long felt. He was,

however, very unlike, in most respects, to myself. He was rather

phlegmatic than ardent--slow in his fancies, and shy in his

associations from very fastidiousness. He was too much governed

by nice tastes, to be an active or performing youth; and too much

restrained by them also, to be a popular one. This, perhaps, was

the secret influence which brought us together. A mutual sense

of isolation--no matter from what cause--awakened the sympathies

between us. Our ties were formed, on my part, simply because I was

assured that I should have no rival; and on his, possibly, because

he perceived in my haughty reserve of character, a sufficient

security that his fastidious sensibilities would not be likely to

suffer outrage at my hands. In every other respect our moods and

tempers were utterly unlike. I thought him dull, very frequently,

when he was only balancing between jealous and sensitive tastes;--and

ignorant of the actual, when, in fact, his ignorance simply arose

from the decided preference which he gave to the foreign and

abstract. He was contemplative--an idealist; I was impetuous and

devoted to the real and living world around me, in which I was

disposed to mingle with an eagerness which might have been fatal;

but for that restraint to which my own distrust of all things and

persons habitually subjected me.




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