Instead of that I find you in the midst of this dreary October, as smiling as a morn of May." "My dear Roland," replied Sir John, "I am an orphan; I lost my mother at my birth and my father when I was twelve years old.

At an age when children are usually sent to school, I was master of a fortune producing a million a year; but I was alone in the world, with no one whom I loved or who loved me.

The tender joys of family life are completely unknown to me.

From twelve to eighteen I went to Cambridge, but my taciturn and perhaps haughty character isolated me from my fellows.

At eighteen I began to travel.