The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1876-07-08
A GIRLS FIRST LOVER.
BY HOWARD GLYNDoN.

BY HOWARD GLYNDoN.
Others may come after him-others
usually do come after him, for seldom
is it that a girl marries her first love-
but to none does she ever attach that
strange intangible interest, sacred with
never expressed pathos, which attaches
to her first sweetheart. Her memory
of him is like the faint, delicate per-
fume which still clings about that first
wild rose of summer that he gave her
during the first tete-a-tete walk that
they ever took together in the woods.
How well he remembers it! 1t was the
first summer after she left school. 1t
was little out-of-the-way summer re-
sort where she was staying with a
party of friends, where he CHANGED TO
come, too, and, after meeting her, lin
gered.
She was little futtered to find her.
self walking alone with him, quite by
accident, of course, and both tried to
keep a lively and natural conversation,
and as consequence it was perfectly
absurd, somewhat constrained and alto
gether fragmentary.
Then he saw this rose, the only one
upon bush full of buds that grew close
to the moss-grown trunk of a fallen tree
just over the source of tiny stream OF
water that wound, like tangled thread,
in and out among the trees. He gath
cred and gave it to her with a shy, half
laughing look-so transparentiy con-
scious in its endeavor to be unconsciousi
and with a remark intended to be
sprightly.
And she took it between blush and
q smile, with swift up-look from eyes
that were busily playing hide-and-seek
under the becoming shelter of long
lashes.
She tucked it in at the waistband of
her dress, just as she would have done
any other rose, but how careful she was
not by any sudden movement to leftover
it of its simple circlet of pale pink
leaves!
He does not know-he will never
know-that as soon as she was alone in
her room, with the door locked, she
drew it carefully from her belt and
kissed it daintily, though with depressed
passion, before she exalted it to the
position of honor in her pet vase, bit
of bijouterie, just big enough to hold
this one flower fifty, and in honor of it
filed carefully with clear cold water by
her own pretty fresh fingers, as rosily
tipped as those of Aurora in the act of
drawing aside the curtains of the dawn.
What was the unspoken compact be-
tween them that caused her, standing
before her glass in her simple white dress
that same evening, to pose the flower
shyly among the FURNISHED waves of her
hairf
Will she ever forget how his eyes
thanked her? Will she ever forget the
night on which she wore it? Was there
ever another night like that? Will
there ever be again?
For her: no. For every girl who has
yet to meet her first lover: yes. There
will be just one such for each girl. but
never another.
Was it the earth she trod on? How
beautiful everything was! AS if the
world were just made newt The lights,
the music, the gay chatter, bright
smiles, ringing laughterl And when
she danced with him she seemed to
have wings to her feet. Then at last
they were alone together in the cool,
fragrant, dewy darkness outside, and to
be together, to be arm in arm, to hear
each others voices, that was all they
cared for. There was no other wsrld
for them that night. They were sepa.
rated from our common earth by such 8
swift flowing tide of deep but unspoken
delight. Unspoksn, because young af
fiction is too sacred for words. FRS
love is born dumb, and learns speech bu
slowly. Deep down in each heart wa.
the rapturous consciousness of loving
and being loved by the other, which il
worth a life time of az love your'
1t brimmed each heart with sufficin,
delight, even as flower cup is brimmed
with dew. The sun will drink the dev
up by and by, even as the world will DIR,
up this fountain of innocent gladness
But the dew has been in the flower cul
and in the girls heart. First love, who's
memory never departs.
The wild rose in her hair was withere,
when she again stood before Der glas
with flushed cheeks and a new bright
ness in her eyes. But she laid it-a
carefully as young mother might la
her first born in its cradle-between tw
pages af Tennyson, upon a poem that h
had read to her the day before. 1t rest
there still.
To careless observer, what matter
worn copy of Tennyson with withere'
wild rose pressed between it's leaves?
But to her it is all that is left. NAV be
OF the purest aad tenderest romance of
girls life; it is the first gift of her frs
love!
WHENCE OUR PRESIDENTS HAY
COME.
of "The Old Thirteen" states. onl
five have given presidents TO the re-
public, viz: Virginia, Massachusetts, Ne,
York, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania