We were all on tip-toe to welcome our friends, and
especially our uncle, who from time to time had supplied us with many
rare books, so that we had now quite a valuable library of our own. All
our own family of children were at the same time put into the hospital.
I shall never forget "O dear," "O dear, I have got the symptoms, I have
got the symptoms!" that went around among us children.
I cannot but take occasion to offer a grateful tribute of thankfulness
that we are not now required by law, as then, to subject our children to
such an ordeal and to such strict regimen. Who ever after entirely
recovered from a dread of "hasty pudding and molasses" without salt?
When all was safely over, and my uncle came to take his family home,
there seemed to have been added a new tie of affection by this recent
intimacy, and it was agreed that my uncle's eldest son, a year or two
older than myself, should remain, and for one year recite to my father,
and that I should spend that time in my uncle's family, and become the
companion of a cousin three years younger, who never had a sister.
I have often wished that such exchanges might be more frequently made by
brothers and sisters and intimate friends. It is certainly a cheap and
admirable method of securing to each child those kind and faithful
attentions which money will not always command. I needed the polish of
city life--the freedom and the restraints imposed in well-disciplined
schools, where personal graces and accomplishments were considered
matters of importance as well as furniture for the mind; while my cousin
would be benefited in body and mind by such country rambles, such
fishing and hunting excursions, such feats of ball-playing, as "city
folks" know but little about.
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