"I am afraid that I never loved my parents, though it is not easy to say why, for in a certain sense they had always been kind to me. They had fed, clothed, and educated, but never really made a companion of me. My father was always either engaged in business or pleasure, and my presence as a rule seemed to irritate him. My mother had, almost before I can remember, given up interest in any one; she spent her time chiefly in reading novels, and gave as a reason for thus neglecting her duties the bad health and excessive nervousness which made every movement or sound torture to her. Before marriage she had been a recognized beauty, and for many years enjoyed the gaiety of social life; but at last she had fallen under the influence of some preacher who had thoroughly frightened her. Then for a time she devoted herself to various charitable undertakings, and found religious dissipation in attending conferences and comparing sensations with those who were similarly affected. But this enthusiasm did not last. Finally, she developed a distinct form of hysteria, all her time being devoted either to her health or books, the latter romances either of religious or purely sensational emotion. "As a child I had been left to nurses and governesses, seldom allowed to enter my mother’s room, and whenever the opportunity occurred, it was quite apparent that I was there on sufferance, and that the sooner I left the better it would be for every one concerned. When old enough I was sent to school, and as I was nearly seventeen when I left, you can fancy that my associations with home life were not strong. But though my love may have been weak, it did not prevent me from feeling both pity and terror as I looked on my mother. "Up to this time I had never been brought face to face either with acute suffering or death. As I stood in helpless perplexity, her rambling words still more alarmed me. "’I see it all!’ she cried. ’Damned! after all I am damned!--Look! the road is broad, and hedged in on both sides with flowers--let me get out of it.--Ah! I cannot!--The thorns cut into my flesh, look--look!--did I not say so?--The smoke is rising there in the distance;--it is coming this way, a great cloud sweeping over me--suffocating me.’ "With a terrible cry she struggled violently for a moment with her hands, tearing wildly at her throat; then with an awful groan she fell back dead! "I will not dwell upon what followed, or how my father, who had never seemed to care for her in life, now that she was gone referred to her as the only bond which had bound him to earth. He, however, soon grew resigned to what he called ’the mysterious dispensations of Providence.’ I had, moreover, during the weeks that followed, to put up with what was to me an exceedingly painful form of retrospection on his part, which usually took place after dinner.