the shyest of children; and, at all stages of life, a natural sense
of personal dignity held me back from exposing the least ray of feelings
which I was not encouraged _wholly_ to reveal.

It is needless to pursue, circumstantially, the course of that sickness
which carried off my leader and companion. She (according to my
recollection at this moment) was just as near to nine years as I to
six. And perhaps this natural precedency in authority of years and
judgment, united to the tender humility with which she declined to
assert it, had been amongst the fascinations of her presence. It was
upon a Sunday evening, if such conjectures can be trusted, that the
spark of fatal fire fell upon that train of predispositions to a brain
complaint which had hitherto slumbered within her. She had been
permitted to drink tea at the house of a laboring man, the father of
a favorite female servant. The sun had set when she returned, in the
company of this servant, through meadows reeking with exhalations after
a fervent day. From that time she sickened. In such circumstances,
a child, as young as myself, feels no anxieties. Looking upon medical
men as people privileged, and naturally commissioned, to make war upon
pain and sickness, I never had a misgiving about the result. I grieved,
indeed, that my sister should lie in bed; I grieved still more to hear
her moan. But all this appeared to me no more than as a night of
trouble, on which the dawn would soon arise. O moment of darkness and
delirium, when the elder nurse awakened me from that delusion, and
launched God's thunderbolt at my heart in the assurance that my sister
MUST die! Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it "cannot
be _remembered_." [6] Itself, as a rememberable thing, is swallowed up in
its own chaos. Blank anarchy and confusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf and
blind I was, as I reeled under the revelation. I wish not to recall the
circumstances of that time, when _my_ agony was at its height, and