But let me here interject with all haste, while the mood lasts, a more precise truth. I may be boasting of my discretion with grand metaphors and lofty sentiments, while highlighting my indiscretion with flowery words of false humility. I may again before completing this memoir, but I have been a bad boy. Without much protestation, I surrendered to the demand of the masked highwayman sitting astride his mount at the crossroad, in the darkness of the Shropshire night. Nay, I voluntarily surrendered, knowing well his intent, which required no explanation. The shameful part is that my capitulation was free of any duress that could have made it a choice between life or death, because I did not actually hear him demand in strident tones, “your rectitude or your life.”

I am surprised to recount that the number of relationships with the opposite sex during my Salopian days exceeds the digits of one hand, a fact that clearly illustrates that any transformation that I was able to achieve was not achieved without digressions. Only one relationship, however, raised itself sufficiently out of the mire to be called a romance, and that was accompanied by such a lack of chivalrous and gentlemanly behavior on my part that I shudder to think of it. Suppose you can imagine the ingenuousness of explaining to the mother of four unmarried daughters at varying levels of commitment and eligibility why I had an abiding conviction that I would never marry. In that case, you may be able to understand the quality of my dishonorable intentions. The four daughters could have been characters in a Jane Austen novel, given their genteel dispositions. Daughters of a Shropshire dairy farmer, they could not have been separated from the homeliness of the best provincial traditions. I spent many hours in their family farmhouse, thoroughly enjoying the bucolic, peaceful atmosphere and homely feel.

The second-youngest daughter became the recipient of my reluctant sensual attention. Though lacking classical beauty and tempting sensuousness, she knew well the secret of how to elicit a man’s involuntary declaration of love.

The two eldest daughters became recipients of my romantic ideals when I offered each a silver puzzle ring brought from Turkey, festooned with a sprig of Hawthorne blossom picked only minutes before from a nearby hedgerow.

I could have spared you these few details, as I have those of my more sordid and transient liaisons. Still, I am trying to provide a fair picture upon which to make an assessment of where I am coming from. There are some things that we only need to acknowledge in the darkest recesses of our own hearts, things everyday and unseemly, which in their disclosure would benefit no one but lend to life a shabbiness that it is already well endowed with. In one sense, anything can be overstated and overblown and made unacceptable by pedantic zeal, but in another sense, can any literary genre even begin to approach the mystery of life, which is as enigmatic in its finest details as it is in its grandest designs? So let us stick to the pertinent facts and remain focused on the tale that must be told, even if it kills me. Just kidding.

The highwayman may have plundered some of my treasure. Still, secrecy was serving me well as was the constancy of my new resolve, which only begrudgingly tolerated romantic gestures, what to speak of the crass and lewd communications of licentiousness.