were delicately sensitive, they
could afford to take the passing hour very lightly. They would
even, to a certain extent, treat the surroundings of their
religion as a subject of jest, joking very mildly and gently
about such things as an attitude at prayer or the nature of a
supplication. They were absolutely indifferent to forms. They
prayed, seated in their chairs, as willingly as, reversed, upon
their knees; no ritual having any significance for them. My
Mother was sometimes extremely gay, laughing with a soft, merry
sound. What I have since been told of the guileless mirth of nuns
in a convent has reminded me of the gaiety of my parents during
my early childhood.

So long as I was a mere part of them, without individual
existence, and swept on, a satellite, in their atmosphere, I was
mirthful when they were mirthful, and grave when they were grave.
The mere fact that I had no young companions, no storybooks, no
outdoor amusements, none of the thousand and one employments
provided for other children in more conventional surroundings,
did not make me discontented or fretful, because I did not know
of the existence of such entertainments. In exchange, I became
keenly attentive to the limited circle of interests open to me.
Oddly enough, I have no recollection of any curiosity about other
children, nor of any desire to speak to them or play with them.
They did not enter into my dreams, which were occupied entirely
with grown-up people and animals. I had three dolls, to whom my
attitude was not very intelligible. Two of these were female, one
with a shapeless face of rags, the other in wax. But, in my fifth
year, when the Crimean War broke out, I was given a third doll, a
soldier, dressed very smartly in a scarlet cloth tunic. I used to
put the dolls on three chairs, and harangue them aloud, but my
sentiment to them was never confidential, until our maid-servant
one day, intruding on my audience, and misunderstanding the
occasion of it, said: 'What? a boy, and playing with a soldier
when he's got two lady-dolls to play with?' I had never thought
of my dolls as confidants before, but from that time forth I paid
a special attention to the soldier, in order to make up to him
for Lizzie's unwarrantable insult.

The declaration of war with Russia brought the first breath of
outside life into our Calvinist cloister. My parents took in a
daily newspaper, which they had never done before, and events in
picturesque places,