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I was born in New Orleans. I had very bad health there in my early childhood, and “My Aunt Betsey,” of whom I have before spoken, took a voyage by sea from Baltimore to the “crescent city,” for the purpose of returning with me to a climate which the physicians had said would strengthen my constitution.
She brought me up with the greatest kindness, or rather, I should say she kept me comparatively feeble by her over-care of my health. When I was about fourteen years of age, my father brought my mother and my little sister Virginia on from New Orleans to see me. My meeting with my kind mother I shall never forget. She held me at arms’ length for an instant, to see if she could recognise, in the chubby, healthy boy before her, the puny, sickly child with whom she had parted with such fond regret on board the Carolina, but a few years before; and when, in memory and in heart, she recognized each lineament, she clasped me to her bosom with a wild hysteric joy which compensated her, more than compensated her, she said, for all the agony which our separation had caused her. I loved my mother devotedly, yet I wondered at the emotion which she exhibited at our meeting, and, child though I was, a sense of unworthiness came over me, possibly because my affections could not sound the depths of hers.
My father’s recognition was kinder than I had expected, from what I remembered of our parting in New Orleans. He felt prouder of me than at our parting, I presume, from my improved health and looks, and this made him feel that my being tied to the apron strings of my good old aunt would not improve my manliness. A gentleman whom he had met at a dinner party, who was the principal of an academy, a kind of miniature college, some thirty miles from Baltimore, had impressed my father, by his disquisitions, with a profound respect for such a mode of education.
“William,” said my father, in speaking on the subject to Mr. Stetson, “will be better there than here among the women; he’ll be a baby forever here. No, I must make a man of him. I shall take him next week with me, and leave him in the charge of Mr. Sears.” My mother insisted upon it that I should stay awhile longer, that she might enjoy my society, and that my sister and myself might become attached to each other ere they returned to New Orleans. But my father said, “No, my dear; you know it was always agreed between us that you should bring up Virginia as you pleased, and that I would bring up William as I pleased.”
“Let us take him, then, back to New Orleans,” exclaimed my mother; “he is healthy enough now.”
“But he would not be healthy long there, my dear. No, I have made inquiry: Mr. Sears is an admirable man, and under his care, which I am satisfied will be paternal, William will improve in mind, and learn to be a man—will you not, William?”
I could only cling to my mother without reply.
“There,” exclaimed my father, exultingly, “you see the effect of his education thus far.”
“The effect of his education thus far!” retorted my aunt Betsey, who did not relish my father’s remark; “he has been taught to say his prayers, and to love his parents and tell the truth. You see the effects in him now,” and she pointed to me, seated on a stool by my mother.