my Aunt Lucy’s, whom I had not seen for ten years, who resided in the town of Groveland, near Geneseo, in Livingston County, in the State of New York. My grandfather, on the mother’s side, left Connecticut forty years ago, in consequence of extreme melancholy, after his wife’s demise, and buried himself in the wilderness of Groveland, and wrote to none of his kindred for twenty years. He first worked on a farm, and as the country became more populous, he taught school and realized enough to buy him a farm from the famous Mr. Wadsworth, whom he knew in youth in Connecticut. At the expiration of twenty years, he wrote to East Hartford, Ct., and his surviving daughter, Lucy, with her husband, a drunken and cruel vagabond, went to Groveland, and in about five years after their arrival, my grandfather died, and Aunt Lucy and her husband coaxed him in his closing hours to leave his farm to them, which was worth about twenty thousand dollars, one-half of which should have reverted to my mother’s children, who were allowed one dollar each, so that they could not break the will. On my arrival, I found my aunt’s husband drunk, and she told me that he had involved the farm in debt, which was mortgaged for a large amount, and that he treated her like a brute. They lived in a one-story hut, consisting of one room, and a pigeon-house in the roof. I arrived at midnight, in a stage coach, and as there was no house within a mile, I was compelled to stop all night, but where I was to sleep I could not divine. Aunt Lucy asked me if I was prepared to retire, and responding yes, she lit a cheap candle, and led me to the rear of the hovel, and up she went a ladder, like a squirrel, and bade me follow. On arriving at the door of the pigeon-house, she suspended one leg to enable me to pass her, and then gave me the candle, and we bade each other good night, and I crawled in, passing through dense partitions of cobwebs, and battalions of spiders and rats, and down I lay for the night, and counted minutes until the morning’s dawn, when I emerged from the hideous hole, in which I had nearly suffocated. I took breakfast, consisting of pork and herring, and visited my grandfather’s grave in a distant field, and departed for Geneseo in the mail coach, where I examined my grandfather’s Will, and found that my mother’s children could never obtain their share of his beautiful estate. I left for Rochester, and departed for Albany in a canal boat, and worked a short time in a printing office at Utica. I left for New York, and worked a brief period in the job office of William A. Mercein, and went to Philadelphia, where I worked a week, and left for Baltimore, where I found my brother Albert, who was a compositor in the printing office of the _Baltimore Sun_, just started by Mr. Abel, (an old friend of mine,) whose editor and subsequent famous Washington correspondent was Sylvester S. Southworth. [Mr. Abel is a native of Warren, Rhode