It hardly seems possible, yet as I look back fifty-six years and consider Jim Wolf, I am almost persuaded that he was.

He was our long slim apprentice in my brother's printing-office in Hannibal.

He was seventeen, and yet he was as much as four times as bashful as I was, though I was only fourteen.
He boarded and slept in the house, but he was always tongue-tied in the presence of my sister, and when even my gentle mother spoke to him he could not answer save in frightened monosyllables.

He would not enter a room where a girl was; nothing could persuade him to do such a thing.
Once when he was in our small parlor alone, two majestic old maids entered and seated themselves in such a way that Jim could not escape without passing by them.

He would as soon have thought of passing by one of Harris's plesiosaurians ninety feet long.