Then comes that dream of bliss that for weeks and months throws a halo of glory round the most ordinary characters in every-day life, holding the strongest and most common-sense young men and women in a thraldom from which few mortals escape.  The period when love, in soft silver tones, whispers his first words of adoration, painting our graces and virtues day by day in living colors in poetry and prose, stealthily punctuated ever and anon with a kiss or fond embrace.  What dignity it adds to a young girl’s estimate of herself when some strong man makes her feel that in her hands rest his future peace and happiness!  Though these seasons of intoxication may come once to all, yet they are seldom repeated.  How often in after life we long for one more such rapturous dream of bliss, one more season of supreme human love and passion!

After leaving school, until my marriage, I had the most pleasant years of my girlhood.  With frequent visits to a large circle of friends and relatives in various towns and cities, the monotony of home life was sufficiently broken to make our simple country pleasures always delightful and enjoyable.  An entirely new life now opened to me.  The old bondage of fear of the visible and the invisible was broken and, no longer subject to absolute authority, I rejoiced in the dawn of a new day of freedom in thought and action.

My brother-in-law, Edward Bayard, ten years my senior, was an inestimable blessing to me at this time, especially as my mind was just then opening to the consideration of all the varied problems of life.  To me and my sisters he was a companion in all our amusements, a teacher in the higher departments of knowledge, and a counselor in all our youthful trials and disappointments.  He was of a metaphysical turn of mind, and in the pursuit of truth was in no way trammeled by popular superstitions.  He took nothing for granted and, like Socrates, went about asking questions.  Nothing pleased him more than to get a bevy of bright young girls about him and teach them how to think clearly and reason logically.

One great advantage of the years my sisters and myself spent at the Troy Seminary was the large number of pleasant acquaintances we made there, many of which ripened into lifelong friendships.  From time to time many of our classmates visited us, and all alike enjoyed the intellectual fencing in which my brother-in-law drilled them.  He discoursed with us on law, philosophy, political economy, history, and poetry, and together we read novels without number.  The long winter evenings thus passed pleasantly, Mr. Bayard alternately talking and reading aloud Scott, Bulwer, James, Cooper, and Dickens, whose works were just then coming out in numbers from week to week, always leaving us in suspense at the most critical point of the story.  Our readings were varied with recitations, music, dancing, and games.