ild,--the sanctity and the happiness of self-sacrifice; undo not what
it should teach to his dying day."

CHAPTER V.

When I was between my seventh and my eighth year, a change came over me,
which may perhaps be familiar to the notice of those parents who
boast the anxious blessing of an only child. The ordinary vivacity
of childhood forsook me; I became quiet, sedate, and thoughtful. The
absence of play-fellows of my own age, the companionship of mature
minds, alternated only by complete solitude, gave something precocious,
whether to my imagination or my reason. The wild fables muttered to
me by the old nurse in the summer twilight or over the winter's
hearth,--the effort made by my struggling intellect to comprehend the
grave, sweet wisdom of my father's suggested lessons,--tended to feed a
passion for revery, in which all my faculties strained and struggled, as
in the dreams that come when sleep is nearest waking. I had learned to
read with ease, and to write with some fluency, and I already began to
imitate, to reproduce. Strange tales akin to those I had gleaned from
fairy-land, rude songs modelled from such verse-books as fell into my
hands, began to mar the contents of marble-covered pages designed for
the less ambitious purposes of round text and multiplication. My mind
was yet more disturbed by the intensity of my home affections. My love
for both my parents had in it something morbid and painful. I often wept
to think how little I could do for those I loved so well. My fondest
fancies built up imaginary difficulties for them, which my arm was to
smooth. These feelings, thus cherished, made my nerves over-susceptible
and acute. Nature began to affect me powerfully; and, from that
affection rose a restless curiosity to analyze the charms that so
mysteriously moved me to joy or awe, to smiles or tears. I got my father
to explain to me the elements of astronomy; I extracted from Squills,
who was an ardent botanist, some of the mysteries in the life of
flowers. But music became my darling passion. My mother (though the
daughter of a great scholar,--a scholar at whose name my father raised
his hat if it happened to be on his head) possessed, I must own it
fairly, less book-learning than many a humble tradesman's daughter can
boast in this more enlightened generation; but she had some natural
gifts which had ripened, Heaven knows how! into womanly accomplishments.
She drew with some elegance, and painted flow