I sat down on the bed when she was gone, and wished myself back in Varick-street; and then cried, to think that I should be homesick for such a dreary home.

But the appetites and affections common to humanity had not been left out of my heart, though I had been beggared all my life in regard to most of them.

I could have loved a mother so--a sister--I could have had such happy feelings for a place that I could have felt was home.
What matter, if I could not even remember the smile on my mother's lips; what matter, if no brother or sister had ever been born to me; if no house had ever been my rightful home?
I was hungry for them all the same.

And these first glimpses of the happy lives of others seemed to disaffect me more than ever with my own..