EARLY IMPRESSIONS-1832-1851 519 



Pharphar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the rivers 

 of Israel ? May I not wash in them and be clean ? The 

 good rector s answer was, in effect, &quot;No, you may not. 

 The Almighty designated the river Jordan as the means 

 for securing health and safety; and so in these times he 

 has designated for a similar purpose the church which 

 is the Protestant Episcopal Church: outside of that as 

 the one appointed by him you have no hope.&quot; 



But gradually there came in my mind a reaction ; and, 

 curiously, it started from my love for my grandmother 

 my mother s mother. Among all the women whom I re 

 member in my early life, she was the kindest and most 

 lovely. She had been brought as a young girl, by her 

 parents, from Old Guilford in Connecticut; and in 

 her later life she often told me cheerily of the days 

 of privation and toil, of wolves howling about the cot 

 tages of the little New York settlement in winter, of jour 

 neys twenty miles to church, of riding on horseback from 

 early morning until late in the evening, through the for 

 ests, to bring flour from the mill. She was quietly reli 

 gious, reading every day from her New Testament, but 

 remaining in the old Congregational Church which my 

 mother had left. I remember once asking her why she 

 did not go with the rest of us to the Episcopal Church. 

 Her answer was, Well, dear child, the Episcopal Church 

 is just the church for your father and mother and for you 

 children ; you are all young and active, but I am getting 

 old and rather stout, and there is a little too much getting 

 up and sitting down in your church for me. To the harsh 

 Calvinism of her creed she seemed to pay no attention, 

 and, if hard pressed by me, used to say, &quot;Well, sonny, 

 there is, of course, some merciful way out of it all. Her 

 religion took every kindly form. She loved every person 

 worth loving, and some not worth loving, and her bene 

 factions were extended to people of every creed; espe 

 cially was she a sort of Providence to the poor Catholic 

 Irish of the lower part of the town. To us children she 

 was especially devoted reconciling us in our quarrels, 



