the dullness of the life around me into
taking hold of them with eagerness, I should have led the life of a
little heathen in the midst of light. Of course the books were not
written for my especial case, nor were they books for children,--and so,
much was supposed, and not expressed, and consequently the truth they
imparted to me was but fragmentary. But it was truth, and the
influence was holy.

I was driven to books; I do not believe I had any more desire than most
vivid, palpitating, fluttering young things of my sex, to pore over a
dull black and white page; but this black and white gate opened to me
golden fields of happiness, while I was perishing of hunger in a life of
dreary fact.

When I was about sixteen, however, an outside human influence, not
written in black and white, came into the current of my existence. About
that time, my uncle took into his firm, as junior partner, a young man
who had long been a clerk in the house. After his promotion he often
came home with my uncle to dinner. I think this was done, perhaps, with
a view of civil treatment, on the first occasion; but afterward, it was
continued because my uncle could not bear to leave business when he left
the office, and because he could talk on the matters which were dearer
to him than his dinner, with this junior, in whom he took unqualified
delight. He often wrote letters in the evening, which my uncle dictated,
and he sometimes did not go away till eleven o'clock at night. The first
time he came, I did not notice him very much. It was not unusual for
Uncle Leonard to be accompanied by some gentleman who talked business
with him during dinner; and being naturally shy, and moreover, on this
occasion, in the middle of a very interesting book, at once timid and
indifferent, I slipped away from the table the moment that I could. But
upon the third or fourth occasion of his being there, I became
interested, finding often a pair of handsome eyes fixed on me, and being
occasionally addressed and made a partner in the conversation. Uncle
Leonard very rarely talked to me, and I think found me in the way when
Richard Vandermarck made the talk extend to me.

But this was the beginning of a very much improved era for me. I lost my
shyness, and my fear of Uncle Leonard, and indeed, I think, my frantic
thirst for books, and became quite a young lady. We were great friends;
he brought me books, he told me about other people, he opened a thousand
doors of i