As a remembrance
of his passion, he pointed out a heart carved on the bark of one of
the trees; but which, in the process of time, had grown out into a
large excrescence; and he showed me a lock of her hair, which he wore
in a true-lover's knot, in a large gold brooch.
I have seldom met with an old bachelor that had not, at some time or
other, his nonsensical moment, when he would become tender and
sentimental, talk about the concerns of the heart, and have some
confession of a delicate nature to make. Almost every man has some
little trait of romance in his life, which he looks back to with
fondness, and about which he is apt to grow garrulous occasionally. He
recollects himself as he was at the time, young and gamesome; and
forgets that his hearers have no other idea of the hero of the tale,
but such as he may appear at the time of telling it; peradventure, a
withered, whimsical, spindle-shanked old gentleman. With married men,
it is true, this is not so frequently the case: their amorous romance
is apt to decline after marriage; why, I cannot for the life of me
imagine; but with a bachelor, though it may slumber, it never dies. It
is always liable to break out again in transient flashes, and never so
much as on a spring morning in the country; or on a winter evening
when seated in his solitary chamber stirring up the fire and talking
of matrimony.
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