"Suddenly all was changed. When I had lived about two years in their house, my adoptive parents saw their heart's desire fulfilled. A child was born to them, the most beautiful and gifted creature I have ever seen. As if by magic, everything grew bright--even I, was changed, and became a good-humoured and sensible lad. I was quite infatuated about the little girl, and watched her like a nurse. For hours together I played with her. I taught her to speak, to run, forgot my dearest occupations, and all my schoolfellows when with her. "My behaviour towards her parents also completely altered. These excellent people, instead of no longer caring for my society, now redoubled their kindness towards me, and seemed to regard both of us as their children and as having an equal right to their affection. "As time went on, my fraternal love for the little Ellen only increased with my years; the more so, that a curious similarity in our characters became more perceptible every day. She was not one of those soft, pliable and easily managed girls who give no more trouble to their mothers, than to their future husbands. She would suddenly change from the most extravagant gaiety, to the deepest melancholy--if one can use the term, melancholy, in speaking of a child. In those moments, she would steal out of the garden where she had been romping, and laughing with her little companions, and, come to my little room, sit down with grave face, opposite to me, at my writing-table, and read the first book she could get hold of. "From my school-days upwards, I had always been heart and mind, a naturalist, and had no other thought, but that I would study medicine as my father had done. I used to show her all my collections, even the skeleton of a large monkey which stood in a corner behind my bed, and to hold most unchildlike conversations with the little girl; at other times she would communicate her childishness to me; I cooked for her dolls and physicked them after having first carefully bedaubed their faces with the tokens of the measles and I filled her little garden with all sorts of medical herbs from my herborium. We never shewed much tenderness towards each other. Only once I kissed her lips; it was when I left for the University at nineteen years of age.