I have now mentioned all my studies.
I was a solitary being, and from my infant years, ever since my dear nurse left me, I had been a dreamer.

I brought Rosalind and Miranda and the lady of Comus to life to be my companions, or on my isle acted over their parts imagining myself to be in their situations.

Then I wandered from the fancies of others and formed affections and intimacies with the aerial creations of my own brain--but still clinging to reality I gave a name to these conceptions and nursed them in the hope of realization.

I clung to the memory of my parents; my mother I should never see, she was dead: but the idea of [my] unhappy, wandering father was the idol of my imagination.

I bestowed on him all my affections; there was a miniature of him that I gazed on continually; I copied his last letter and read it again and again.
Sometimes it made me weep; and at other [times] I repeated with transport those words,--"One day I may claim her at your hands." I was to be his consoler, his companion in after years.