LETTER II.
EARLY YEARS.
As I look back to the opening vista of life, a sense of quiet happiness steals over me. It is like the reflection of that softest beam which a vernal morning wins from the sun while he yet lingers in his bed, when the mists catch a rose-tint as they steal away, and the dews and unopened buds praise the Lord.
I have been told that my infancy was healthful, though apparently delicate, and that I was in haste to take hold of the faculty of speech. Words of my uttering when nine and ten months old were oft repeated to me; and though I suppose them to have been simply imitated articulations, the friends who recorded them in memory were tenacious of them as proofs of rapidly-unfolding perception and precocious intellect. I was favorably situated to be accounted marvellous, having no little competitor, and falling principally into the company of those somewhat advanced in life, who welcomed me as a curiosity, and had full leisure to note all my doings. My father was
