In this home I found myself at the age of thirteen. I was the pupil and the charge of the occupant of the cottage, a retired clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Walworth, who having grown gray in the active service of his Master, had come there to pass his last days in the enjoyment of competence and peace. Even now, as on the day when I left him forever, I can see his tall form, bent with age and clad in black, his mild, pale face, with hair as white as snow,--I can hear that voice, whose very music was made up of the goodness of a heart at peace with God and man. When I was thirteen, myself, the good clergyman, and an aged woman--the housekeeper--were the only occupants of the cottage. His only son was away at college. And when I was thirteen, my mother, who had placed me in the care of the clergyman years before, came to see me. I shall never forget that visit. I was sitting on the cottage porch--it was a June day--the air was rich with fragrance and blossoms--my book was on my knee--when I heard her step in the garden-walk. She was tall and very beautiful, and richly clad in black, and her dark attire shone with diamonds. Very beautiful, I say, although there were threads of silver in her brown hair, and an incessant contraction of her dark brows, which gave a look of anxiety or pain to her face. As she came up the garden-walk, pushing aside her vail of dark lace, I knew her, although I had not seen her for three years. Her presence was strange to me, yet still my heart bounded as I saw her come. "Well, Frank," she said, as though it was but yesterday since I had seen her, "I have come to see you,"--she kissed me warmly on the lips and cheeks.--"Your father is dead, my child." A tear stood in her dark eye, a slight tremor moved her lip--that was all. My father dead! I can scarcely describe the emotions which these words caused. I had not seen my father for years. There was still a memory of his face present with me, coupled with an indistinct memory of my early childhood, passed in a city of a foreign land, and a dim vision of a voyage upon the ocean. And at my mother's words there came up the laughing face and sunny hair of my brother Gulian, who had suddenly disappeared about the time my parents returned from Paris, and just before I had been placed in the charge of the good clergyman. These mingling memories arose at my mother's words, and although the good clergyman stood more to me in the relation of a father than my own father, still I wept bitterly as I heard the words, "Your father is dead, my child." My mother, who seemed to me like one of those grand, rich ladies of whom I had read in story-books, seated herself beside me on the cottage porch.