intercourse, and she never wrote letters. I sometimes trace impressions
on my mind, made in early life, which I am sure must have been through
her means, and though the good seed died on the ground, while the weeds
took root and flourished, still, here and there a grain might sink below
the surface, to spring up after many days.

And now I must record my first sorrow, although I cannot dwell upon it
as on some other things. My brother had been nearly two years absent, on
service in the Peninsula, when an apoplectic attack arrested my lather
in the midst of life and health and vigor, and every promise of
lengthened years. The premonitory visitations of repeated strokes were
disregarded, for we could not, would not, realize the approach of such
an event, and persisted in believing them nervous; but just when all
cause for alarm seemed at an end, and I was rejoicing in the assurance
of its being so, I was called from my pillow at midnight to see that
tender and beloved parent die. The bereavement was terrible to me: I had
always been his principal companion, because no one else in the family
had a taste for those things in which he delighted--literature and
politics especially--and since my brother's departure, instead of
seeking to replace him by friends of my own age, I had turned wholly to
my father, never desiring to pass an hour out of his society, and
striving to be to him both daughter and son. My mother was a perfect
devotee to household affairs, every thought occupied in seeking to
promote the domestic comforts of her family; while I, indulging a
natural antipathy to all that did not engage the intellectual powers,
gave her no help there, I was truly cumbering the ground, seeking only
my own gratification, and dignifying my selfishness with many fine
names, only because it was best indulged in my own dear home. From the
period of my loss of hearing, music had been wholly banished; my father
seemed to lose all relish for what could no longer minister enjoyment to