me. My mother died when I was too young to retain any recollection
of her; but my father soon married again, and in that step-parent I
found a love and care which fully compensated my loss. I can recall her
now as she looked towards the latter part of her life--a tall, delicate,
feeble woman, with a very sweet face. She was a widow when my father
married her, and had one son, who became my sole companion, the partner
of all my youthful pleasures. You told me, many years ago, that I could
not imagine how much you loved Willie, and I then had nearly confided to
you my early history, and to convince you that my own experience taught
me how to understand such a love; but I checked myself, for you were too
young then to know so sad a story as mine. How dear my young playmate
became to me no words can express. The office which each filled, the
influence which each of us exerted upon the other, created mutual
dependence; for though his was the leading spirit, the strong and
determined will, and I was ever submissive to a rule which to my easily
influenced nature was never irksome, there was one respect in which my
bold young protector and ruler ever looked to me for aid. It was to act
as mediator between him and my father; for while the boy was almost an
idol to his mother, he was ever treated with coldness and distrust by my
father, who never appreciated his noble qualities, but seemed always to
regard him with dislike.

"That my father's sternness towards her son was distressing to our
mother I doubt not; for I remember the anxiety with which she strove to
conceal his faults and the frequent occasions on which she instructed me
to propitiate the parent, who, for my sake, would often forgive the boy,
whose adventurous disposition was continually bringing him into
collision with one of whose severity, when displeased, you can judge. My
step-mother had been poor in her widowhood, and her child having
inherited nothing which he could call his own, was wholly dependent upon
my father's bounty. This was a stinging cause of mortification to the
pride of which even as a boy he had an unusual share; and often have I
seen him irritated at the reception of favours which he well understood
were far from being awarded by a paternal hand.

"While our mother was spared to us we lived in comparative harmony, but
when I was sixteen years old she suddenly died. Well do I remember the
last night of her life, her calling me to her bedside and s