84 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



the candles was a matter of wonderment, for the heated fat 

 is nearly colorless while the candles are white. The reeling of 

 the silk and the wonder of the grub inside concerned me most. 

 I was allowed to see the living grubs feeding on mulberry leaves 

 and spinning their cocoons and thereby came to know the 

 stages of the creature's life up to the chrysalis. Oddly enough, 

 for I was a prying lad and about eight years old, I had not 

 noticed these changes among the wild insects. My infantile 

 military mania must have closed my eyes as it shuts those of 

 grown men. 



From the many sturdy old men who were about me in my 

 youth, I had many stories of the pioneer stages of the settle- 

 ments of northern Kentucky and the neighboring parts of 

 Ohio. These tales are all too dim for re-telling, but the quality 

 of these brave old fellows stays with me. As is usually the case 

 with the really valiant, they were very gentle. There was in 

 them not a trace of the roistering cowboy who masquerades as 

 "a terror/' but is cowed by the silent, woman-faced "real 

 thing." Of this group I remember best a certain Richard 

 Taliaferro, a remote kinsman, a very gentle giant, who as a lad 

 of fifteen had captained a party of women, children, and some 

 slaves from eastern Virginia to their destination on the Ken- 

 tucky shore just above Cincinnati. They travelled by horse and 

 wagon to the Monongahela River and then built a broadhorn 

 on which they floated down the Ohio, seeking for the sign of 

 their landing-place, a white flag on a tree-top. They found it, 

 and established near by the home of his long life. When I 

 last saw him about 1888, he showed me over the place. Of 

 his house, which he dearly loved, he said, "Here were raised 

 eighteen children and there never was a quarrel among them." 

 He was himself the embodiment of peace. 



At this stage of the trouble between North and South, " Uncle 

 Tom's Cabin" appeared. I well remember the excitement it 

 created among my own people; the irritation was the greater 

 because it was believed that Mrs. Stowe, who lived for a time 



