half past six in the evening of July 8
I think he was heartily glad of the innovation made in our family circle , which , of itself , was as wonderful to me as the story of Aladdin 's Lamp to the mind of a child . It happened so strangely too . Before I tell you of this event I must explain that our family circle consisted of father , mother , Halbert , Ben and myself . It was half past six in the evening of July 8 , 18 -- , and we had just finished supper , when a loud knock was heard at the back door , and opening it we received a letter from the hands of a neighbor , who came over from the post-office and kindly brought our mail with him . We received a good many letters for farming people , and I had kept up a perfect fire of correspondence with Mary Snow ever since she went to the home of her uncle , who lived some twenty miles distant , but this appeared to be a double letter , and mother broke the seal , while we all listened to her as she read it . It is not necessary to quote the whole of it , but the gist of the matter was this : A distant cousin of father 's who had never seen any of us , nor any member of the family to which her mother and my father belonged , had settled in the city of -- , about thirty miles from our little village . Her husband dying shortly afterward , she was left a widow with one child , a son .