I began to make my preparations for departure without delay.
Tender remonstrances, studied expostulations, were alike of no avail, and
they helped me to pack, finally--those dear good people at home--putting
as brave a face as they could upon it, and hoping for the best. My father
assured my mother, though with trembling lip and tearful eye, that "God
would temper the wind to the shorn lamb." I smiled at the part I was
meant to play in this cheerful allegory, though it seemed to me rather
inappropriate, as I had a new sealskin cloak that very winter.
At the last I gathered from the new and sprightlier form which the family
submissiveness assumed, as well as from certain inadvertent disclosures
of Bridget's, that I was confidently expected home again "in the course
of a week or two." And I thereupon doubly confirmed myself in the resolve
to see this thing through or die in the attempt.
I cannot define the motives which actuated me at this time. They do not
appear to have flowed in a clear and pellucid stream. I discover a thirst
for the surprising and experimental, for situations, dilemmas, and
emergencies, sustained by the most sublime recklessness as to
consequences.
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