remember what love was then lost to me. Both were youthful at death,
but my Aunt Sophia was ever elderly. She was keen, and just, seldom
less than kind; but a child was to her something of a little animal,
and it was nothing more. In consequence, well fed, warmly clad, and in
freedom, I grew up almost in solitude between my angels, hearkening
with how simple a curiosity to that everlasting warfare of persuasion
and compulsion, terror and delight.

Which of them it was that guided me, before even I could read, to the
little room dark with holly trees that had been of old my uncle's
library, I know not. Perhaps at the instant it chanced there had
fallen a breathless truce between them, and I being solitary, my own
instinct took me. But having once found that pictured haven, I had
found somewhat of content.

I think half my youthful days passed in that low, book-walled chamber.
The candles I burned through those long years of evening would deck
Alps' hugest fir; the dust I disturbed would very easily fill again
the measure that some day shall contain my own; and the small studious
thumbmarks that paced, as if my footprints, leaf by leaf of that long
journey, might be the history of life's experience in little,--from
clearer, to clear, to faint--how very faint at last!

I do not remember ever to have been discovered in this retreat. I was
(by nature) prompt at meals, and wary to be in bed at my hour, however
transitory its occupation might be. Indeed, I very well recollect
dawn painting the page my eyes dwelt on, surprising me with its
mystery and stealth in a house as silent as the grave.

Thus entertained then by insubstantial society I grew up, and began to