That was a day of fate. How bitterly have I cursed it since; how cursed her, who snatched me from my little heaven with its delightful anticipations and chaperoned me through the hot-house of passion; where every beautiful flower was filled with a subtle poison which raked the nerves, sapped the life, and deadened the brain. My introduction to the pleasures and mysteries that have ever been associated with the couch of love — the keen relish for which has blasted the family hearthstone and overthrown empires — was not entrusted to a novice; no timid simpering girl, taking her first steps toward the realization of the anticipation of forbidden pleasures, but to a woman; a woman of thirty, who being an apt pupil under the skillful manipulations and teachings of a husband for a term of years, had herself become a preceptor in all those delicate points that surrounded and amour with such delights and rosy tints. how plainly do I see her to-night! How much keener my appreciation of the wonderful piece of anatomy that time only still deeper imprints upon my memory; the standard, by which from that time all female perfections and loveliness has been gauged. Ah! She is before me again, and this time unveiled. Look at her! Is she not beautiful? Note the poise of her head, from which her glinted, golden hair falls in such a wealth. See those amber eyes; those wonderfully chiseled lips, so red, pulpy, and moist; her fair cheeks tinted by their reflection. Her shoulders — how perfectly and exquisitely molded — rounded with the same finish of her beautiful swelling globes, so daintily pinked and tipped. What belly, back and hips ever had the graceful curves of thine? And you! Rounded arms, white swelling thighs, and full-dimpled knees (in your warm, fond pressure of years ago I feel you again to-night) was the mold broken with your completion?