visits of (to my childish feeling) strange uncles and aunts and cousins
from my father's far-off native country, and once a journey of my own,
as a little child, with my father and mother, to see my uncle William
(a rich builder) in Staffordshire--but _not_ my uncle and aunt Samuel,
so far as I can recall the dim outline of things--are what I remember
of northerly relatives in my childhood.

But when I was seventeen or more--after my sister was married and I was
mistress of the house--my father took a journey into Derbyshire, in
which, visiting my uncle and aunt Samuel, who were very poor, and lived
in a humble cottage at Wirksworth, he found my aunt in a very delicate
state of health after a serious illness, and, to do her bodily good, he
persuaded her to return with him, telling her that _I_ should be very,
very happy to have her with me for a few weeks. I was then strongly
under the influence of Evangelical belief, and earnestly endeavoring to
shape this anomalous English-Christian life of ours into some
consistency with the spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New
Testament. I _was_ delighted to see my aunt. Although I had only heard
her spoken of as a strange person, given to a fanatical vehemence of
exhortation in private as well as public, I believed that I should find
sympathy between us. She was then an old woman--about sixty--and, I
believe, had for a good many years given up preaching. A tiny little
woman, with bright, small, dark eyes, and hair that had been black, I
imagine, but was now gray--a pretty woman in her youth, but of a
totally different physical type from Dinah. The difference--as you will
believe--was not _simply_ physical; no difference is. She was a woman
of strong natural excitability, which I know, from the description I
have heard my father and half-sister give, prevented her from the
exercise of discretion under the promptings of her zeal. But this
vehemence was now subdued by age and sickness; she was very gentle and