The Doctors Daughter | Page 4

the world less desolate, less empty to a million hearts, because a
million others inhabit it as well? Has God's original intention
concerning the mutual love and companionship of His creatures,
survived unto the present day? I think the record of each reader's large
or small experience will answer this question for him eagerly enough.
That these preliminary reflections should be the outgrowth of such an
ordinary event as the coming of a new baby into the already crowded
world may seem extravagant in more ways than one: but my object, as
the reader will see, is only to remind the forgetful majority, that there
are necessarily many reasons why men and women who have had a
common starting-point in life, should find themselves ere long at such
different goals.
I would suggest to them to consider the essential impressionability of
the human heart, especially in its period of early development, to
examine the nature of every external influence that weighs upon it, and
if the innocence of childhood has been recklessly forfeited with time, to
reserve their judgment until every aspect of the circumstances has been
impartially viewed.
I do not deny that the cradle in which I passed the first hours of comfort
and ease I have ever known, was rocked by a hand as loving as that
which rested caressingly upon the royal brow of the baby Victoria.

From the very first I was a peculiarly situated child, surrounded by
many comforts of which the majority of well-born children are
deprived, and deprived of many comforts by which lowly-born children
are surrounded. I was happiest when I was too young to distinguish
between pleasure and pain, and, as it were to provide for the emptiness
of much of my after life, destiny willed that my memory should be the
strongest and most comforting faculty of my soul.
My mother died when I was but a few days old, and thus it is that I
have never known the real love or care of a true parent. Before I had
celebrated my third birthday there was another Mrs. Hampden
presiding over our household, but she was not my mother. This I never
learned as a direct fact, in simple words, until I had grown older; but
there is another channel through which truths of this sorrowful nature
oftentimes find their way: strange suspicions were creeping by degrees
into my heart, which with time gained great headway, and resolved
themselves into a questioning doubt, whether there had not been a day
when another, and a kinder face bent over my little cot, and smiled
upon me with a sweetness that did not chill and estrange me from it.
I had never been told in simple words, that my own mother lay under
one of those tall silent tombstones in the graveyard, where old Hannah,
our tried and trustworthy servant, was wont to go at times and pray. No
one had whispered to me that my father's second wife was, by right, a
stranger to the most sacred affections of my young soul, but I learned
the truth by myself.
When my growing heart began to seek and ask for the tender, patient
solicitude, which is to the child what the light and heat of the summer
sun are to the frailest tendril, no answer came to my mute appeal. My
little weaknesses and childish errors were never met with that enduring
forbearance which is the distinctive outgrowth of a loving maternity.
My trifling joys were rarely smiled upon, my petty sorrows never
shared nor soothed by that unsympathetic guardian of my youth, and so
I grew up by myself in a strange sort of isolation, alienated in heart and
spirit from those with whom of necessity I came in daily contact.
And yet in many ways, my fathers' wife bestowed both care and

consideration upon me. My physical necessities were ever becomingly
attended to. I was allowed to sit at the table with her, which privilege
suggested no lack of substantial and dainty provisions, and my
governess was an accomplished and very discreet lady, whom my
step-mother secured after much trouble and worry; but here the limit
was drawn to her self-imposed duties; having done this much she rested
satisfied that she had so far outstepped the obligations of her neutral
position.
When I look back upon this period from the observatory of to-day, I
can afford to be more impartial in my judgments than I was in my
youth and immaturity. I know now, that my father's second wife was
naturally one of those selfish, narrow-hearted women, who never go
outside of their personal lot to taste or give pleasure. She had not the
faintest conception of what the cravings or desires of a truly sensitive
nature may be, and