it was partly the delight of a sudden relief from the old, monotonous pain, the unexpected unbending of a tense and overborne mind and momentary obliteration of the dreary immediate past, and partly the outburst of a passionate temperament which I had never suspected; but on my part there arose an attachment as chivalric as ever a knight of Arthur’s time felt, yet perfectly platonic.  That she was nearly old enough to have been my mother did not in the least matter—­it was no question of love as young folks feel it; but in my heart I offered myself a bearer of her sorrows.  I had only recently recovered from my wandering into the wilderness of doubt, and my religious faith was as vivid as when I had been at my mother’s knee—­Providence ruled, and God answered prayer.  This phase of my life, juvenile as I now perceive it to be, I respect as the most honest in it.  I honor the weakness as I cannot always what seems the later strength.  Those who read my life may put the estimate on it which suits their creed; I only speak of it as a phenomenon of my Puritan youth.  I prayed earnestly that I might take on myself her afflictions, if so she might be healed and come back to her right mind.  That was Friday night, for her family were “Seventh-Day keepers,” and I had gone to pass the Sabbath with them, so I stayed two days, continuing my devotions earnestly.  On Monday I went back to my colportage, but that night I was taken with a sharp attack of bronchitis, with high fever, and obliged to keep my room at the hotel.  The next day, finding the matter serious, I sallied out and returned to the house of her parents, and remained there while the attack lasted.  A naturally strong constitution was my safety, and made light of what was really a sharp attack of acute trouble, which kept me in the house a considerable time, the care and happy charge of my friend.

What any physician of minds would have foreseen took place.  She found in the attention to her patient the diversion from all the train of past preoccupations, and forgot in this absolutely novel situation the old trouble.  To the delight of the family she began to take an interest in the affairs of the house, and, though for years she had utterly neglected the most trivial attention to her dress and personal appearance, and had shown such a determinedly suicidal disposition that her mother had been obliged to sleep in the same bed with her to be able to watch her effectively, she now became bright and cheerful and seemed her old self again.  From that time forward she rapidly recovered, and when I went back to college we began a close correspondence which was the beginning of my real literary education, for her taste in literature was excellent, if a little sentimental, and her criticisms were so sound that in some respects they have never lost their effect on my way of thinking and expressing thought.  She was persuaded to come to Schenectady and pass the period of my next vacation in our family.