is heel
and left me, with no reply.

The vision of the motherly lady, distant and indistinct as it was,
haunted me like a familiar melody. If the person was my mother, why
should her very name be kept from me? If she was still living, why
could I not go to her? If she was dead, why might I not water the
green sod above her grave with my tears, and plant the sweetest
flowers by her tombstone? I was dissatisfied with my lot, and I was
determined, at no distant day, to wring from my silent uncle the
particulars of my early history. I was so eager to get this knowledge
that I was almost ready to take him by the throat, if need be, and
force out the truth from between his closed lips.

I never had an opportunity to speak with him; but I could make the
opportunity. He took no notice of me; he avoided me; he seemed hardly
to be conscious of my existence. Yet he was not a hard man, in the
common sense of the word. He clothed me as well as the best boys in
the Institute. If I wanted anything for the table, old Jerry was
ordered to procure it. When I was ten years old a little row-boat was
furnished for me; but before I was fourteen I wanted something better,
and told my uncle so. He made me no reply; but on my next birthday a
splendid sail-boat floated on the lake before the house, which Jerry
said had been built for me. I told my silent lord that I was much
obliged to him for his very acceptable present, when I happened to
catch him on the lawn. He turned on his heel, and fled as though I had
stung him with the sting of ingratitude.

If I wanted anything, I had only to mention it; and no one criticised
my conduct, whatever I did. I was free to go and come when I pleased;
and though in vacation I was absent three days at once in my boat, no
one asked me where I had been, or what I had done. Neither my uncle
nor his silent satellites ever expressed a fear that I might be
drowned in my voyages in night and storm on the lake; and I came to
the conclusion that no one would care if I were lost.

I do not know how, under such a home government, I ever became a
decent fellow. I do not know why I am not now a pirate, a freebooter,
a pickpocket, or a nuisance to myself and the world in some other
capacity. I have come to believe since that my inherited good
qualities saved me under such an utter neglect of all home influences.
It is a marvel to me that I was not ruined before I was twenty-one;
and from the deepest depths of my heart