Ah! naught so bright
But sometime will lustre lose.
That night brought a change in her. When she came to bed she as usual let me get in her snowy arms, but the kisses I had learned to love were missing. She allowed me freedom with her bosom, but with any attempt to put my hand under her chemise she took it away, saying: "No, no more."
Ah! in those boyish days I did not know that nature had ordered an armistice in favor of the little citadel which had so often been stoned, stormed, and entered. The last rapture I ever knew lying between her voluptuous swelling thighs was on that day she took me with her to the city, and that night my young boyish heart felt its first aches and trouble.
Two days after she kissed me sweetly at the gate, saying that she would never forget me (it has been mutual), and when the carriage that took her away was out of sight the sky seemed darkened, the grass was dead, the flowers had lost their perfume and beauty.
My heart seemed like a lump of ice. My life followed on after that carriage — followed her for days and weeks out on the long miles which lay between us. I grew nervous, pale, and restless. I could eat nothing, and that bed was so big and lonesome that I could not sleep — only lie and toss while my fevered brain sketched and re-sketched the beautiful life figures which she had unveiled for my eager eyes. Books, flowers, drawing, pony — all things of the past. The juice of the orange I had sucked was still in my mouth, the spark she had discovered and fanned was burning me alive. The strain at last was too much; memory was lost in unconsciousness, and on the same bed so hallowed by the lingerings of the past I was battling with death.
After long weeks I was victorious, and when strong enough returned to school. But, ah! in those few days she injected into my veins the sweet poison which has remained for years.
I sacrificed health and ambition, but in exchange took my first lessons in an art that has puzzled the world, which in later years has been held in high appreciation, which now I sometimes think repays me for all.
Trusting that in the perusal of this you will be rewarded with all the pleasurable emotions that you have anticipated — that I have written nothing to burst the front buttons from the pantaloons of my gentlemen friends, or bring the dear girls to the use of a long-necked cologne bottle to quench the flame in their electrical generators, my task is finished.