midnight
Sarah Livingston , beautiful , sweet , and clever , was pensively in love ; but Kitty and Susan were not , and they were handsome and dashing . They were sufficiently older than Alexander to inspire him with the belief that he was in love with each in turn ; and if he was constant to either , it was to Kitty , who was the first to reveal to him the fascination of her sex . But they did not interrupt the course of his studies ; and in the dawn , when he repaired to the Burial Yard Lot to think out his difficult task for the day , not a living face haunted the tombstones . And when winter came and he walked the vast black forests alone , the snow crunching under his feet , the blood racing in his body , a gun on his shoulder , lest he meet a panther , or skated till midnight under the stars , a crystal moon illuminating the dark woods on the river 's edge , the frozen tide glittering the flattering homage of earth , he felt so alive and happy , so tingling and young and primeval , that had his fellow-inhabitants flown to the stars he would not have missed them . Until that northern winter embraced and hardened him , quickening mind and soul and body , crowding the future with realized dreams , he never had dared to imagine that life could be so fair and beautiful a thing . On stormy winter nights , when he roasted chestnuts or popped corn in the great fireplace of Liberty Hall , under the tuition of all the Livingston girls , Sarah , Susan , Kitty , and Judith , he felt very sociable indeed ; and if his ears , sometimes , were soundly boxed , he looked so penitent and meek that he was contritely rewarded with the kiss he had snatched . The girls regarded him as a cross between a sweet and charming boy to be spoiled -- one night , when he had a toothache , they all sat up with him -- and a phenomenon of nature of which they stood a trifle in awe .