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CHAPTER IX
Washington dreamed his way along the street, his fancy flitting from
grain to hogs, from hogs to banks, from banks to eyewater, from eye-water
to Tennessee Land, and lingering but a feverish moment upon each of these
fascinations. He was conscious of but one outward thing, to wit, the
General, and he was really not vividly conscious of him.
Arrived at the finest dwelling in the town, they entered it and were at
home. Washington was introduced to Mrs. Boswell, and his imagination
was
on the point of flitting into the vapory realms of speculation again,
when a lovely girl of sixteen or seventeen came in. This vision swept
Washington's mind clear of its chaos of glittering rubbish in an instant.
Beauty had fascinated him before; many times he had been in love even for
weeks at a time with the same object but his heart had never suffered so
sudden and so fierce an assault as this, within his recollection.
Louise Boswell occupied his mind and drifted among his multiplication
tables all the afternoon. He was constantly catching himself in a
reverie--reveries made up of recalling how she looked when she first
burst upon him; how her voice thrilled him when she first spoke; how
charmed the very air seemed by her presence. Blissful as the afternoon
was, delivered up to such a revel as this, it seemed an eternity, so
impatient was he to see the girl again. Other afternoons like it
followed. Washington plunged into this love affair as he plunged into
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