No wonder the child arose and walked in
her sleep, moaning all over the house, till once, when they
heard her, and came and waked her, and she told what she had
dreamed, her father sharply bid her "leave off thinking of
such nonsense, or she would be crazy,"--never knowing that he
was himself the cause of all these horrors of the night. Often
she dreamed of following to the grave the body of her mother,
as she had done that of her sister, and woke to find the
pillow drenched in tears. These dreams softened her heart too
much, and cast a deep shadow over her young days; for then,
and later, the life of dreams,--probably because there was in
it less to distract the mind from its own earnestness,--has
often seemed to her more real, and been remembered with more
interest, than that of waking hours.
'Poor child! Far remote in time, in thought, from that
period, I look back on these glooms and terrors, wherein I was
enveloped, and perceive that I had no natural childhood.'
BOOKS.
'Thus passed my first years. My mother was in delicate health,
and much absorbed in the care of her younger children. In the
house was neither dog nor bird, nor any graceful animated form
of existence.
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