xiv This Book and Balie Peyton 



legal and business circles; new problems that demanded 

 the best energies of younger men who must need build 

 for the future. This is the heaviest penalty age has to 

 endure. Others had paid it to Peyton, and now when 

 younger men exacted it of him, he yielded with good na- 

 ture and becoming grace. And it would seem, that dur- 

 ing all the years of his absence in other lands he had not 

 forgotten that the time would come when, in the race 

 with younger competitors, he would have to pull up 

 outside the distance and retire. At any rate, it was his 

 good fortune, such as comes to but few men, to spend his 

 declining years amidst the scenes of his earliest associa- 

 tions. Followed always by a pack of hounds, he walked, 

 or rode his favorite saddler, a gray, through the fields 

 and woodlands where for nearly half a century his horses 

 had grazed; and here he dwelt with pleasant retrospec- 

 tion on their qualities and the incidents they had brought 

 into his life. 



Pupils who attended his daughter's school at Station 

 Camp at this period still retain vivid recollections of the 

 kindness and consideration that convinced them that Col. 

 Peyton was the greatest man in the world. 



But there were stronger ties than these that bound 

 Peyton to this land which his father, a Revolutionary 

 soldier, had won from the savage. It was his birthplace, 

 his first play ground. It was here that he first heard the 

 stories of Revolutionary and Settlers' wars, that fired his 

 young heart with a desire to serve his country. Here he 

 had lived the first years of his married life; here his 

 children had spent their infancy; and here, after his elec- 

 tions to Congress, he had received the plaudits of admir- 

 ing friends. 



But the old home place was not without its sorrow- 

 laden memories. Here, on Christmas Day, a young 



