When I was nine years old a letter was received by my father, the contents of which set us children in an uproar of joy.  It was from our father’s elder brother, who resided in a city seventy miles distant from our country residence.  This letter stated if all was favorable we might expect all his family to become our guests on the following week, our aunt and cousins to remain in our family some length of time, and be subjected to the trial of inoculation from that dreaded disease—­small-pox.  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.  Some fears were expressed lest this boy should lose something by forsaking his well-organized school, and fall behind his classmates.  But I have heard that cousin say, as to literary attainments, this year was but the beginning of any high intellectual attainments; for till now he had never learned how to study so that intellectual culture became agreeable to him.  And what was gratifying, it was found on his return home that he was far in advance of his classmates.  So needful is it often to have the body invigorated, and the mind should receive a right bias, and that such kind of stimulants be applied as my father was able to give to the wakeful, active mind, of his aspiring nephew.

Many times after my return home did my mother bless “sister N——­” for the many useful things she had taught me.  My highest ambition had been to iron my uncle’s large fine white cravats, which, being cut bias, was no easy attainment for a child.