"My brother is my guardian, and nature and duty, it would seem, should prompt him to guard my happiness as well as my interest; but I know in the one instance he fails, and I fear in the other I am suffering. All my family fear him, and none of them love me. I am my parents' youngest child. Oh, sir! England is not the only country where it is a curse to be a younger child. My father died when I was an infant. My mother was affectionate and indulgent; my sisters were harsh and tyrannical, and in very early girlhood taught me to hate them. My mother was made miserable by their treatment of me; and my brother, too, quarrelled with her because she would not subject me to the servility of the discipline he prescribed. This quarrel ripened into hate, and he never came to the house or spoke to my mother for years. "The day before she died, and when her recovery was thought to be impossible, he came with a prepared will and witnesses, which in their presence he almost forced her to sign: in this will I was greatly wronged, and this brother has tauntingly told me the cause of this was my being the means of prejudicing our mother against him. "He married a coarse, vulgar Kentucky woman, and brought her into the house. She was insolent and disrespectful toward my mother, and I resented it. She left the house, and died a few months after. Since that day, though I was almost a child, my life has been one of constant persecution on the part of my brother and sisters. I am compelled to endure it, but do so under protest; if not in words, I do in manner, and this I am persuaded you have on more than one occasion observed. Please do not consider me impertinent, nor let it influence you in your opinion of me, when I tell you my brother has rudely said to me that I was too forward in my intercourse with you. It is humiliating to say this to you; but I must, for it explains my conduct, which save in this regard has been motiveless.