Rev. John Bruckner, settled in Norwich when Amelia Alderson was seven years of age, and he gave her instruction in the French language, and also in some solid branches of acquirement then much neglected in female education. She had great love of, and some skill in, music—particularly singing. Added to this was a mind active to acquire and tenacious to retain knowledge, with an imagination so graceful, and a love of poetry so great, that its youthful possessor was in danger of living too much in an ideal world, for her gifts were just those which need the utmost discretion in their culture and use.
This first grief—the loss of her mother—checked the exuberance of her spirits, and called her reflective faculties into exercise. That dear mother had been wise and firm, as well as tender in the management of her gifted child, who had the good sense and gratitude to remember her admonitions and reproofs, as thankfully as the more indulgent and pleasant evidences of her affection. In a sweet poem to her mother's memory, written some years after her death, Amelia says:—
"Oh how I mourned my heedless youth
Thy watchful care repaid so ill;
Yet joyed to think some words of truth
Sunk in my soul and teach me still;
Like lamps along life's fearful way,
To me, at times, those truths have shone;
And oft when snares around me lay.
