At sixteen an immense crisis occurred in my life.  I fell in love.  I had been in love several times before—­chiefly with the elder pupils at the Miss Andrews’ establishment; and once (but that was when I was very young indeed) with the cook.  This, however, was a much more romantic and desperate affair.  The lady was a Columbine by profession, and as beautiful as an angel.  She came down to our neighborhood with a strolling company, and performed every evening, in a temporary theatre on the green, for nearly three weeks.  I used to steal out after dinner when my father was taking his nap, and run the whole way, that I might be in time to see the object of my adoration walking up and down the platform outside the booth before the performances commenced.  This incomparable creature wore a blue petticoat spangled with tinfoil, and a wreath of faded poppies.  Her age might have been about forty.  I thought her the loveliest of created beings.  I wrote sonnets to her—­dozens of them—­intending to leave them at the theatre door, but never finding the courage to do it.  I made up bouquets for her, over and over again, chosen from the best flowers in our neglected garden; but invariably with the same result.  I hated the harlequin who presumed to put his arm about her waist.  I envied the clown, whom she condescended to address as Mr. Merriman.  In short, I was so desperately in love that I even tried to lie awake at night and lose my appetite; but, I am ashamed to own, failed signally in both endeavors.

At length I wrote to her.  I can even now recall passages out of that passionate epistle.  I well remember how it took me a whole morning to write it; how I crammed it with quotations from Horace; and how I fondly compared her to most of the mythological divinities.  I then copied it out on pale pink paper, folded it in the form of a heart, and directed it to Miss Angelina Lascelles, and left it, about dusk, with the money-taker at the pit door.  I signed myself, if I remember rightly, Pyramus.  What would I not have given that evening to pay my sixpence like the rest of the audience, and feast my eyes upon her from some obscure corner!  What would I not have given to add my quota to the applause!

I could hardly sleep that night; I could hardly read or write, or eat my breakfast the next morning, for thinking of my letter and its probable effect.  It never once occurred to me that my Angelina might possibly find it difficult to construe Horace.  Towards evening, I escaped again, and flew to Barnard’s Green.  It wanted nearly an hour to the time of performance; but the tuning of a violin was audible from within, and the money-taker was already there with his pipe in his mouth and his hands in his pockets.  I had no courage to address that functionary; but I lingered in his sight and sighed audibly, and wandered round and round the canvas walls that hedged my divinity.  Presently he took his pipe out of, his mouth and his hands out of his pockets; surveyed me deliberately from head to foot, and said:—­