MY LIFE 



A RECORD OF EVENTS AND OPINIONS 



CHAPTER I 



MY RELATIVES AND ANCESTORS 



Our family had but few relations, and I myself never saw a 

 grandfather or grandmother, nor a true uncle, and but one aunt 

 — my mother's only sister. The only cousins we ever had, so 

 far as I know, were that sister's family of eight or nine, all 

 but two of whom emigrated to South Australia in 1838. Of 

 the two who remained in England, the daughter had married 

 Mr. Burningham, and had only one child, a daughter, who 

 has never married. The son, the Rev. Percy Wilson, had a 

 family, none of whom, however, I have ever met, though I 

 have recently had a visit from a son of another cousin, Alger- 

 non, with whom I had a considerable correspondence. 



My father was practically an only son, an elder boy dying 

 when three months old ; and as his father died when he 

 was a boy of twelve, and his mother when he was an infant, he 

 had not much opportunity of hearing about the family history. 

 I myself left home before I was fourteen, and only rarely 

 visited my parents for short holidays, except once during my 

 recovery from a dangerous illness, so that I also had little 

 opportunity of learning anything of our ancestors on the 

 paternal side, more especially as my father seldom spoke of 

 his youth, and I as a boy felt no interest in his genealogy. 

 Neither did my eldest brother William — with whom I lived 



