Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/761

Rh more and more eager for his return, and on the 2d of April, 1764, to the great joy of the family, he made his appearance. The visit was brief, and gave no hope that he would settle in Hanover. In describing it, Caroline is spoken of as "the poor little unnoticed girl," and the event as standing in her memory "fraught with anguish too deep for words." She was disappointed in her hope of enjoying this visit of her brother, for it came at the time of her confirmation. She says:

The Sunday fixed for his departure was the very day on which she was to receive her first communion:

The last years of her father's life are thus described:

Caroline was now seventeen, with only the barest rudiments of education, and for the next two years the time passed uneventfully in household occupations; but at the age of twenty a new turn was suddenly given to her thoughts by the arrival of letters from William, proposing that she should join him at Bath, in England.

"To make trial if by his instruction I might not become a useful singer for his winter concerts and oratorios, he advised my brother Jacob to give me some lessons by way of beginning; but that, if after a trial of two years we should not find it answer our expectation, he would bring me back again. This at first seemed agreeable to all parties, but, by the time I had set my heart upon it, Jacob began to turn the whole scheme into ridicule, and, of course, he never heard the sound of my voice except in speaking, and yet I was left in the harassing