BOYHOOD IN CENTRAL NEW YORK- 1832 -1850 5 



old-fashioned flowers, and in this I learned to walk. To 

 this hour the perfume of a pink brings the whole scene 

 before me, and proves the justice of Oliver Wendell 

 Holmes 's saying that we remember past scenes more viv- 

 idly by the sense of smell than by the sense of sight. 



I can claim no merit for clambering out of poverty. 

 My childhood was happy; my surroundings wholesome; 

 I was brought up neither in poverty nor riches ; my par- 

 ents were what were called " well-to-do-people "; every- 

 thing about me was good and substantial; but our mode 

 of life was frugal ; waste or extravagance or pretense was 

 not permitted for a moment. My paternal grandfather 

 had been, in the early years of the century, the richest 

 man in the township; but some time before my birth he 

 had become one of the poorest; for a fire had consumed 

 his mills, there was no insurance, and his health gave way. 

 On my father, Horace White, had fallen, therefore, the 

 main care of his father's family. It was to the young 

 man, apparently, a great calamity: that which grieved 

 him most being that it took him a boy not far in his 

 teens out of school. But he met the emergency man- 

 fully, was soon known far and wide for his energy, 

 ability, and integrity, and long before he had reached 

 middle age was considered one of the leading men of busi- 

 ness in the county. 



My mother had a more serene career. In another part 

 of these Reminiscences, saying something of my religious 

 and political development, I shall speak again of her and 

 of her parents. Suffice it here that her father prospered 

 as a man of business, was known as * ' Colonel, ' ' and also 

 as "Squire" Dickson, and represented his county in the 

 State legislature. He died when I was about three years 

 old, and I vaguely remember being brought to him as he 

 lay upon his death-bed. On one account, above all others, 

 I have long looked back to him with pride. For the first 

 public care of the early settlers had been a church, and 

 the second a school. This school had been speedily de- 

 veloped into Cortland Academy, which soon became fa- 



