My older brothers had sense enough to give Uttle trouble, but I must 

 have been a source of great vexation to my long-suffering Mother. Be- 

 ing the only child of the family then in Princeton, all the older people 

 petted and spoiled me and, at the same time, I was unmercifully teased. 

 As a result, I became pert, conceited, and subject to violent storms of 

 rage, when I seemed to go almost out of my mind. Happily I outgrew 

 that violence of temper; the conceit was pretty well knocked out of 

 me by my encounters with the world, but I have never entirely over- 

 come the peculiar and conflicting influences of my childhood. It was not 

 well for me that I was so lonely, for I had no playmates till I went to 

 school. True, it had the advantage of driving me to books and making 

 me an omnivorous reader, but the sense of loneliness remained and had 

 permanent ill effects. The soft sighing of the wind in the group of white 

 pines behind the house, the blazing glories of the sunset sky used to 

 fill me with a solemn joy that was painful for lack of expression. I used 

 to walk up and down, gazing at the sunset and praying aloud, as the 

 only vent I could find for my overstrained emotions. 



My grandparents lived in a very simple, but entirely comfortable 

 fashion. Once a week, or so, the afternoon drive was to my Grand- 

 father's farm near Kingston, for a supply of butter and eggs. The 

 sedate bay mares, Dolly and Phoebe, were harnessed to a heavy, lum- 

 bering coach and my usual place was beside the driver. There had 

 been an elaborate poultry-yard near the house, but the minks, to my 

 mind mysterious and terrible beasts of prey, had forced the abandon- 

 ment of it. One or two milch cows were brought in from the farm 

 which, together with the large vegetable garden, suppUed the table, 

 so that groceries, some fruit, meat, fish, and oysters were the only things 

 purchased. Bread was always made in the house and our butcher came 

 from Trenton; considering the state of the roads at that time, one won- 

 ders how he found any profit in doing it. 



The contrast between my mode of life and that of my brother Lenox 

 was so great, that it seems hardly possible, in retrospect, that we should 

 have lived under the same roof. Sometimes I was permitted to join in 

 his campaigns against the Indians, or in his big-game hunts, but my 

 action was perfunctory, for my heart was little in such matters. 



[9] 



