ABSTRACT
Such was the monotony of my life during the years in which I resided under the roof of my uncle. Few were the occasions that were calculated to awaken in me the social affections, in their purest and most fascinating tone. To all this however there was one exception. I have already said that I had a sister. This sister I had scarcely seen; and I almost forgot that she existed. One morning Hilkiah communicated to me the intelligence that she was expected on a visit; my uncle had invited her to spend a week or ten days under his roof. It cannot be imagined what pleasure / I derived from the information. The entrance of one stranger, and that stranger a visitor, under the battlements of our mansion, was an event as memorable, as a congress of half the sovereigns of Europe, and all the splendours of their reception, would be to the fashionable and the gay.
