"As you have known before, my mother died when I was a very little
child, scarcely three years old. I remember her but very
indistinctly. The woman who is now my father's wife, was his
housekeeper in my mother's life-time. She, of course, came from the
common walks of life, her father being a very poor butcher. How she
ever became my father's wife, I do not know; but my old nurse used
to intimate to me that it was by no honorable means. Be that as it
may, he married her when I was four years of age; and from that date
my miserable story begins. The first incident of my life after this
second marriage which I remember most vividly was this. A year after
my father's marriage to Rebecca, business of importance called him
to England, and a long-cherished desire to see his aged parents took
him to Bohemia, where they lived, after the business in Liverpool
was transacted. How I fared while he was gone, I dimly remember; but
well enough, I suppose, as I was still partially under the care and
control of my faithful nurse, a colored woman of kind and tender
heart.

"Poor, dear old woman, she is dead long ago!

"This visit of my father to his parents proved to be the last, as
they died a year or two afterward. Among my father's relatives in
the old country, was a cousin who lived in wealth and luxury
somewhere in Saxony. This cousin had been as a brother to him in his
young days, and on my father's return from Bohemia, he passed
through Saxony and paid this cousin a visit; He still speaks
occasionally of that delightful event. I must not forget to tell you
that this cousin was a baron--Baron von Rosenberg. He was not born to
the title; it was conferred on him for some heroic act, the
circumstance of which I do not now remember, during an insurrection.