But after sitting there a long time alone, and of course forgotten in the rapture of this family reunion, thoughts of self began to steal over and chill the ardor of my sympathetic emotions.

I could not help feeling myself a mote in the dazzling sunshine of their happiness.

I could not help experiencing, in all its bitterness, the isolation of my own destiny.

I remembered the lamentation of the aged and solitary Indian, "that not a drop of his blood flowed in the veins of a living being." So it was with me.

To my knowledge, I had not a living relative.