Читать книгу All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography онлайн

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In spite of my painful efforts to make a regular worker out of myself, life at college was lightened by my discovery of the Boy. Incredible as it seems to me now, I had come to college at eighteen without ever having dared to look fully into the face of any boy of my age. To be sure, I had from childhood nourished secret passions for a succession of older individuals whom I never saw except at a distance, and with whom I never exchanged a word. My brother and his friends, my father and his friends—these I had always hobnobbed with; but those who naturally should have been my companions, I shunned. I was unable to take part in those things that brought the young people of the day together. I did not dance—the Methodist discipline forbade it. I was incredibly stupid and uninterested in games—still am. I had no easy companionable ways, was too shy to attempt them. I had my delights; the hills which I ran, the long drives behind our little white horse, the family doings, the reading of French regularly with my splendid friend Annette Grumbine, still living, still as she was then a vitalizing influence in the town and state for all that makes for a higher social life—these things and my precious evening walks, the full length of Titusville’s main street, alone or with some girl friend while we talked of things deepest in our minds.