cheated her systematically, using for his own purposes the remittances
she made for payment of liabilities, thus keeping upon her a constant
drain. Yet for me all that was wanted was ever there. Was it a ball to
which we were going? I need never think of what I would wear till the
time for dressing arrived, and there laid out ready for me was all I
wanted, every detail complete from top to toe. No hand but hers must
dress my hair, which, loosed, fell in dense curly masses nearly to my
knees; no hand but hers must fasten dress and deck with flowers, and
if I sometimes would coaxingly ask if I might not help by sewing in
laces, or by doing some trifle in aid, she would kiss me and bid me
run to my books or my play, telling me that her only pleasure in life
was caring for her "treasure." Alas! how lightly we take the
self-denying labour that makes life so easy, ere yet we have known
what life means when the protecting motherwing is withdrawn. So
guarded and shielded had been my childhood and youth from every touch
of pain and anxiety that love could bear for me, that I never dreamed
that life might be a heavy burden, save as I saw it in the poor I was
sent to help; all the joy of those happy years I took, not
ungratefully I hope, but certainly with as glad unconsciousness of
anything rare in it as I took the sunlight. Passionate love, indeed, I
gave to my darling, but I never knew all I owed her till I passed out
of her tender guardianship, till I left my mother's home. Is such
training wise? I am not sure. It makes the ordinary roughnesses of
life come with so stunning a shock, when one goes out into the world,
that one is apt to question whether some earlier initiation into
life's sterner mysteries would not be wiser for the young. Yet it is a
fair thing to have that joyous youth to look back upon, and at least
it is a treasury of memory that no thief can steal in the struggles of
later life. "Sunshine" they called me in those bright days of merry
play and earnest study. But that study showed the bent of my thought