to tell us most interesting things about life in one of the slave states, 

 where slavery was manifested in its mildest and least objectionable form. 

 One thing that has always remained clearly in my memory was her ac- 

 count of the constant dread of a slave insurrection, which hung over 

 the heads of the whites. The example of Hayti and San Domingo was 

 ever before them and their intense hatred of the Abolitionists, who made 

 a hero of John Brown, was due to the belief that these northern fanatics 

 meant to deliver the wives and children of the slave-holders to all the 

 horrors of a slave rebellion. How groundless this fear was, was amply 

 demonstrated by the Civil War, when the plantation famiUes were at 

 the mercy of their slaves who very rarely abused their power. I have 

 been surprised to learn from my Father's letters how strong and wide- 

 spread among his Kentucky friends was the antislavery sentiment; 

 their difficulty was to know how to rid themselves of the hateful thing — 

 like the man who had the wolf by the ears, they didn't dare let go. 



In 1857 my Father accepted a call to the Seventh Presbyterian Church 

 in Cincinnati and there I was born on February 12, 1858. My Mother 

 often told how she amused part of her enforced leisure, when recover- 

 ing from her confinement, by reading the long newspaper accounts of 

 the wedding of the Princess Royal of England and the Crown Prince of 

 Prussia. Happily, she was spared the knowledge of the frightful issues 

 to which that marriage was to lead. In 1S59, my Father became a pro- 

 fessor in the Northwestern Theological Seminary in Chicago (now 

 called the McCormick Seminary). I retain a long series of the clearest 

 and most vivid memory pictures of our Ufe in Chicago, but they are 

 isolated and do not form a connected series. Strange to sav. I remember 

 nothing of the outbreak of the Civil War, or of the battle of Bull Run, 

 which caused such excitement and consternation throughout the North, 

 though the visit of a soldier uncle, which I well remember, must have 

 been connected with the beginning of the war. 



Despite his splendid physique, my Father's health began to fail and 

 by the simimer of 1861 it became evident that he had not long to Hve, 

 and he went home to Princeton to die. Of that sorrowful October pil- 

 grimage I can remember our stops in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, but 

 httle of the journey itself, save the ending of it. I still seem to see the 

 ferryboat that took us across the Delaware to Camden, the starry night 

 and the broad river in nocturnal mystery. It was late when, at length, 

 we reached Princeton and drove up Canal (now .Alexander ) Street in 

 one of the lumbering coaches, known as "hacks," which used to ply 

 between the station on the canal and the town. How well I remember 



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