own so completely into the shade.

The faint, yet not improbable, belief has often come across me,
that your father knows something more about my birth and
condition than he is willing to communicate; it is so unlikely
that I should be left in Edinburgh at six years old, without any
other recommendation than the regular payment of my board to old
M--, [Probably Mathieson, the predecessor of Dr. Adams, to whose
memory the author and his contemporaries owe a deep debt of
gratitude.] of the High School. Before that time, as I have
often told you, I have but a recollection of unbounded indulgence
on my mother's part, and the most tyrannical exertion of caprice
on my own. I remember still how bitterly she sighed, how vainly
she strove to soothe me, while, in the full energy of despotism,
I roared like ten bull-calves, for something which it was
impossible to procure for me. She is dead, that kind, that ill-
rewarded mother! I remember the long faces--the darkened rooms
--the black hangings--the mysterious impression made upon my mind
by the hearse and mourning coaches, and the difficulty which I
had to reconcile all this to the disappearance of my mother. I
do not think I had before this event formed, any idea, of death,
or that I had even heard of that final consummation of all that
lives. The first acquaintance which I formed with it deprived me
of my only relation.

A clergyman of venerable appearance, our only visitor, was my
guide and companion in a journey of considerable length; and in
the charge of another elderly man, substituted in his place, I
know not how or why, I completed my journey to Scotland--and this
is all I recollect.