ON BEING ALONE IN THE HOUSE
THERE are some joys we may as well be prepared to resign with our youth. Being alone in the house is one of them. Such an intoxication of sudden expansion and freedom used to come over me on those rare occasions when I was left in possession of the house, that I recall it as one of the most subtle and delicious experiences of my childhood. The consciousness of hidden fullness in the cupboards, and labeled stores in the cellar; of bottled sweetness and mulled ravishments, almost oppressed me with its vividness. All the secrets of the house leaped from their crannies at such times, and became my familiars. I remember a silk-crepe shawl with fringe of a prodigious length, that never saw day-light except on these occasions when I paraded my small person before the mirror, engulfed in the ample folds that clung about me as softly and caressingly as ever they had about my grandmother even on her wedding day.
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