The tricks
and passions I had been teased into became irksome, and I was disliked
by my teachers for the very lessons they had taught me.
My mother died; and my power as a spoiled child was at an end. There
was no longer any necessity to humor or tolerate me, for there was
nothing to be gained by it, as I was no favorite of my father. I
therefore experienced the fate of a spoiled child in such situation,
and was neglected or noticed only to be crossed and contradicted. Such
was the early treatment of a heart, which, if I am judge of it at all,
was naturally disposed to the extremes of tenderness and affection.
My father, as I have already said, never liked me--in fact, he never
Understood me; he looked upon me as wilful and wayward, as deficient in
natural affection:--it was the stateliness of his own manner; the
loftiness and grandeur of his own look that had repelled me from his
arms. I always pictured him to myself as I had seen him clad in his
senatorial robes, rustling with pomp and pride. The magnificence of his
person had daunted my strong imagination. I could never approach him
with the confiding affection of a child.
My father's feelings were wrapped up in my elder brother. He was to be
the inheritor of the family title and the family dignity, and every
thing was sacrificed to him--I, as well as every thing else. It was
determined to devote me to the church, that so my humors and myself
might be removed out of the way, either of tasking my father's time and
trouble, or interfering with the interests of my brother.
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