We two have lived alone in the world together; father, mother, kindred, they all died years since, and left us.

I am so much older than my sister that I have learned to feel toward her more as a father than as a brother.
All my life, all my dearest hopes, all my highest expectations, have centered in her.

I was past the period of my boyhood when my mother put my little child sister's hand in mine, and said to me on her death-bed: 'Louis, be all to her that I have been, for she has no one left to look to but you.' Since then the loves and ambitions of other men have not been my loves or my ambitions.

Sister Rose--as we all used to call her in those past days, as I love to call her still--Sister Rose has been the one aim, the one happiness, the one precious trust, the one treasured reward, of all my life.

I have lived in this poor house, in this dull retirement, as in a paradise, because Sister Rose--my innocent, happy, bright-faced Eve--has lived here with me.