as I was his sole child, and my dear
mother was to me but an elusive memory of childhood. Sometimes, in still
evenings just before I lit my student's lamp, and I sat alone musing, I
would catch vague glimpses of a sweet, pure face with calm, gray
eyes--but that was all. No figure, no voice, not even her hair, but
sometimes my mind would picture an aureole around her head. I have
often wondered why she was taken from me before I could have known her,
but I have also striven not to be rebellious. But she must have been an
unusual woman, for my father never recovered from her loss, and to the
day of his death he wore a tress of her hair in a locket over his heart.
I have it now, and I wear it always.

I was of a timid disposition, and retiring nature, and so my
acquaintances were few, and of close friends I had not one. My mornings
and evenings were spent with my books, and in the afternoons I took
solitary walks, often wandering out into the country, if the weather was
fine, for the blue sky had a charm for me, and I loved to look at the
distant hills,--the hazy and purple undulations which marked the
horizon. And Nature was never the same to me. Always changing, always
some beauty before undiscovered bursting on my sight, and her limitless
halls were full of paintings and of songs of which I would never tire.
Then, as evening closed in, and I would reluctantly turn back to my
crowded quarters, the sordid streets and the cramped appearance of
everything would fret me, and almost make me envious of the sparrow
perched on the telegraph wire over my head. For he, at least, was lifted
above this thoughtless, hurrying throng among which I was compelled to
pass, and the piteous, supplicating voice of the blind beggar at the
corner did not remind him that even thus he might some day become. And
thus, when my feet brought me to the line of traffic, as I returned
home, I would unconsciously hasten my steps, for the moil and toil of a
city's strife I could not bear.

In the spring of 1860, these long walks to the country became more
frequent. I had been cooped up for four rigorous months, a
predisposition to taking cold always before me as a warning that I must
be careful in bad weather. And the confines of a fourteen by eighteen
room naturally become irksome after weeks and weeks of intimate
acquaintance. It is true there were two windows to my apartment. A
glance from one only showed me the side of a house adjoining the one in