Page:Father's memoirs of his child.djvu/216

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148

viction, that the present bond of union was on the point of being rent asunder, again brought their thoughts to their original tenor of regret and grief.

He frequently desired to have books at his bed-side, which he would request his mother to read to him. In his intervals of comparative ease, he would take pleasure in turning them over for himself. As a singular instance of technical recollection, especially in so young a child, the following circumstance may be mentioned. When he wished to hear any thing which he had before read, he could not only tell in what book to find it, but could generally fix on the number of the page, where the particular passage occurred. His dissected maps, from which he had very early acquired his knowledge of geography, afforded him pleasure and interest to the last. He had some counties of England in his hands, reading the names of the towns in them, within half an hour of his dissolution.

We could not help considering it as a