My aunt, like my father, was always studying something. Some map
or book always lay open before her, when I went to visit her, in
her picturesque old house, with its sloping roof and tall well-
sweep. And she always brought out some book or picture for me
from her quaint old-fashioned chest of drawers. I still possess
the " Children in the Wood," which she gave me, as a keepsake,
when I was about ten years old.
Our relatives form the natural setting of our childhood. We
understand ourselves best and are best understood by others
through the persons who came nearest to us in our earliest years.
Those larger planets held our little one to its orbit, and lent
it their brightness. Happy indeed is the infancy which is
surrounded only by the loving and the good!
Besides those who were of my kindred, I had several aunts by
courtesy, or rather by the privilege of neighborhood, who seemed
to belong to my babyhood. Indeed, the family hearthstone came
near being the scene of a tragedy to me, through the blind
fondness of one of these.
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