His name was Glencoe. He was a pale, melancholy-looking
man, about forty years of age; a native of Scotland, liberally educated,
and who had devoted himself to the instruction of youth from taste rather
than necessity; for, as he said, he loved the human heart, and delighted to
study it in its earlier impulses. My two elder sisters, having returned
home from a city boarding-school, were likewise placed under his care, to
direct their reading in history and belles-lettres.
We all soon became attached to Glencoe. It is true, we were at first
somewhat prepossessed against him. His meager, pallid countenance, his
broad pronunciation, his inattention to the little forms of society, and an
awkward and embarrassed manner, on first acquaintance, were much against
him; but we soon discovered that under this unpromising exterior existed
the kindest urbanity of temper; the warmest sympathies; the most
enthusiastic benevolence. His mind was ingenious and acute. His reading had
been various, but more abstruse than profound; his memory was stored, on
all subjects, with facts, theories, and quotations, and crowded with crude
materials for thinking.
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