Line 162:  With his pure tongue, etc.

This is a singularly roundabout way of describing a country girl’s shy kiss; but the whole passage is very baroque.  My own boyhood was too happy and healthy to contain anything remotely like the fainting fits experienced by shade.  It must have been with him a mild form of epilepsy, a derailment of the nerves at the same spot, on the same curve of the tracks, every day, for several weeks, until nature repaired the damage.  Who can forget the good natured faces, glossy with sweat, of copper-chested railway workers leaning upon their spades and following with their eyes the windows of the great express cautiously gliding by?

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