likely was. Our intense, fear-stricken
admiration of the heroine, when she let her
back hair down, and went mad, in blue. The
buff-boots of Digby the manager. The funny
man (there never was such a funny man) in
a red scratch wig, who, when imprisoned in
the deepest dungeon beneath the castle moat,
sang a comic song about a leg of mutton.
The sorry quadrille band in the orchestra, to
our ears as scientifically melodious as though
Costa had been conductor; Sivori, first fiddle;
Richardson, flute; or Bottesini, double bass.
The refreshment, administered to us by kind
hands during the intervals of performance,
never to be forgotten—oranges, immemorial
sponge-cakes. The admonitions to "sit up,"
the warnings not to "talk loud," in defiance
of which (seeing condonatory smiles on the
faces of those we loved) we screamed outright
with laughter, when the funny man, in the
after-piece, essaying to scale a first floor
front by means of a rope ladder, fell, ladder
and all, to the ground. The final fall of the
green curtain, followed by an aromatic
perfume of orange-peel and lamp-oil, and the
mysterious appearance of ghostly brown
Holland draperies from the private boxes.
Shawling, cloaking, home, and more primaries
—for then it was when we for the first time
"sat up late," and for the first time ever tasted
sandwiches after midnight, or imbibed a sip,
a very small sip, of hot something and
water.

Who can lay his hand upon his waistcoat
pocket, and say he has forgotten his first watch?
Ours was a dumpy silver one, maker's name
Snoole, of Chichester, number seventeen thousand
three hundred and ten. Happy Snoole,
to have made so many watches; yet we were
happy—oh, how happy! to possess even one
of them. We looked at that watch continually;
we set it at every clock, and consulted it
every five minutes; we opened and shut it,
we wound it up, we regulated it, we made it
do the most amazing things, and suddenly
run a little chain off a wheel in a tearing
manner—after which it stopped. How
obliging we were to everybody who wished
to know what o'clock it was! Did we ever
go to bed without that watch snug under
the pillow? Did not a lock of our
sweetheart's hair have a sweet lurking place
between the inner and outer cases? Where
is that dumpy silver watch—where the more
ambitious pinchbeck (there are no pinchbeck
watches now) that followed? Where
is the gold Geneva, the silver lever? How
many watches have we bought, sold, swopped
and bartered since then; and which of them do
we remember half so well as the dumpy silver,
maker's name Snoole, Chichester, seventeen
thousand three hundred and ten!

And the first lock of a sweetheart's hair
brings me to the primary of primaries,—First
love. We don't believe, we can't believe, the
man who tells us be has never been in love,
and can't remember with delicious, and yet
melancholy distinctness, all about it. We
don't care whether it was the little girl with
plaited tails, in frilled trousers, and a
pinafore; (though we never truly loved another)
or your schoolmaster's daughter, or the lady
who attended to the linen department, whom
we thought a Houri, but who was, probably,
some forty years of age. You may have
loved Fanny, Maria, Louisa, Sarah, Martha,
Harriet, or Charlotte, or fancied that you
loved them since then; but in your heart of
hearts you still keep the portrait of your
first love, bright.

By first love, we mean what is commonly
known as "calf love." Our reminiscences of
real first love are indissolubly connected with
a disrelish for our victuals, and a wild desire
to dress, regardless of expense; of dismal
wailings in secret; of a demoniacal hatred of
all fathers, cousins, and brothers; of hot
summer days passed in green fields, staring
at the birds on the boughs, and wishing—oh
how devoutly wishing!— that we were twenty-
one years of age.

The first baby! The doctor, the imperious
nurse, the nervous walking up and down the
parlour, the creaking stairs, the nurse again,
imperious still, but now triumphant. The
little stranger sparring like an infant Tom
Cribb in long clothes. That baby's acts and
deeds for months! His extraordinary shrewdness,
his unexampled beauty, his superhuman
capacity for "taking notice," his admirable
Crichtonian qualities. He was a baby!
Another and another little stranger have dropped
in since then. Each was a baby, but not the
baby!

We hope and trust you may never have had
this primary we are about to speak of? But
there are some persons of the male sex who
may remember with sufficient minuteness the
first time they ever got—elevated. If you
do, the impression will never be eradicated
from your mind. Competent persons have
declared you, on several subsequent occasions,
to have been incapable of seeing a hole in a
ladder. The earth seemed to spin round in an
inconsistent manner; the pavement was soft
—very soft—and felt, you said, as though
you were walking on clouds; until suddenly,
without the slightest provocation, it came
up and smote you on the forehead. Of
course, you didn't fall down—that would have
been ridiculous. Slanderers declared that
you attempted to climb up the gutter, under
the impression that it was a lamp-post; and,
being dissuaded therefrom, vehemently
endeavoured to play the harp upon the area-railings.
How distinctly you remember to this day
how completely you forgot everything; how
you dreamt you were a water-jug with no
water in it—Tantalus, Prometheus, Ixion, all
rolled into one; how you awoke the next
morning without the slightest idea of how
you got into bed; how sick, sorry, and
repentant you were!

Being in genteel society, we would not, of