Even in the matter of girls my peculiar phantasy asserted itself.  Naturally, it was in our town voted bad form for boys of twelve and fourteen to show any evident weakness for girls.  We tolerated them loftily, and now and then they played in our games, when I joined in quite as naturally as the rest.  It was when strangers came, or summer boarders, or when the oldest girls grew up that my sharp senses noted little hesitancies in public and searchings for possible public opinion.  Then I flamed!  I lifted my chin and strode off to the mountains, where I viewed the world at my feet and strained my eyes across the shadow of the hills.

I was graduated from high school at sixteen, and I talked of “Wendell Phillips.”  This was my first sweet taste of the world’s applause.  There were flowers and upturned faces, music and marching, and there was my mother’s smile.  She was lame, then, and a bit drawn, but very happy.  It was her great day and that very year she lay down with a sigh of content and has not yet awakened.  I felt a certain gladness to see her, at last, at peace, for she had worried all her life.  Of my own loss I had then little realization.  That came only with the after-years.  Now it was the choking gladness and solemn feel of wings!  At last, I was going beyond the hills and into the world that beckoned steadily.

There came a little pause,—­a singular pause.  I was given to understand that I was almost too young for the world.  Harvard was the goal of my dreams, but my white friends hesitated and my colored friends were silent.  Harvard was a mighty conjure-word in that hill town, and even the mill owners’ sons had aimed lower.  Finally it was tactfully explained that the place for me was in the South among my people.  A scholarship had been already arranged at Fisk, and my summer earnings would pay the fare.  My relatives grumbled, but after a twinge I felt a strange delight!  I forgot, or did not thoroughly realize, the curious irony by which I was not looked upon as a real citizen of my birth-town, with a future and a career, and instead was being sent to a far land among strangers who were regarded as (and in truth were) “mine own people.”

Ah! the wonder of that journey, with its faint spice of adventure, as I entered the land of slaves; the never-to-be-forgotten marvel of that first supper at Fisk with the world “colored” and opposite two of the most beautiful beings God ever revealed to the eyes of seventeen.  I promptly lost my appetite, but I was deliriously happy!

As I peer back through the shadow of my years, seeing not too clearly, but through the thickening veil of wish and after-thought, I seem to view my life divided into four distinct parts:  the Age of Miracles, the Days of Disillusion, the Discipline of Work and Play, and the Second Miracle Age.

The Age of Miracles began with Fisk and ended with Germany.  I was bursting with the joy of living.  I seemed to ride in conquering might.  I was captain of my soul and master of fate!  I willed to do!  It was done.  I wished! The wish came true.