pitted against that of the memory:  here were all the senses up in arms to subdue the influence of the thoughts:  here was vanity, here was passion, here was the spot of all spots in the world, and here were also the life, and the manners and the habits and the pursuits that I delighted in:  here was every thing that imagination can conceive, united in a conspiracy against the poor little brunette in England!  What, then, did I fall in love at once with this bouquet of lilies and roses?  Oh! by no means.  I was, however, so enchanted with the place; I so much enjoyed its tranquillity, the shade of the maple trees, the business of the farm, the sports of the water and of the woods, that I stayed at it to the last possible minute, promising, at my departure, to come again as often as I possibly could; a promise which I most punctually fulfilled.

147.  Winter is the great season for jaunting and dancing (called frolicking) in America.  In this Province the river and the creeks were the only roads from settlement to settlement.  In summer we travelled in canoes; in winter in sleighs on the ice or snow.  During more than two years I spent all the time I could with my Yankee friends:  they were all fond of me:  I talked to them about country affairs, my evident delight in which they took as a compliment to themselves:  the father and mother treated me as one of their children; the sons as a brother; and the daughter, who was as modest and as full of sensibility as she was beautiful, in a way to which a chap much less sanguine than I was would have given the tenderest interpretation; which treatment I, especially in the last-mentioned case, most cordially repaid.

148.  It is when you meet in company with others of your own age that you are, in love matters, put, most frequently, to the test, and exposed to detection.  The next door neighbour might, in that country, be ten miles off.  We used to have a frolic, sometimes at one house and sometimes at another.  Here, where female eyes are very much on the alert, no secret can long be kept; and very soon father, mother, brothers and the whole neighbourhood looked upon the thing as certain, not excepting herself, to whom I, however, had never once even talked of marriage, and had never even told her that I loved her.  But I had a thousand times done these by implication, taking into view the interpretation that she would naturally put upon my looks, appellations and acts; and it was of this, that I had to accuse myself.  Yet I was not a deceiver; for my affection for her was very great:  I spent no really pleasant hours but with her:  I was uneasy if she showed the slightest regard for any other young man:  I was unhappy if the smallest matter affected her health or spirits:  I quitted her in dejection, and returned to her with eager delight:  many a time, when I could get leave but for a day, I paddled in a canoe two whole succeeding nights, in order to pass that day with her.  If this was not love, it was first cousin to it; for as to any criminal intention I no more thought of it, in her case, than if she had been my sister.  Many times I put to myself the questions:  ’What am I at?  Is not this wrong? Why do I go?’ But still I went.