Xll MEMOIR. 



cheerful, intelligent child; but quiet and thoughtful, pet- 

 ted by the elder brothers and sister, standing sometimes 

 in the door, as he grew older, and watching the shadows 

 of the clouds chase each other over the Fishkill mountains 

 upon the opposite side of the river ; soothed by the uni- 

 versal silence of the country, while the constant occupation 

 of the father, and of the brother who worked with him in 

 the nursery, made the boy serious, by necessarily leaving 

 him much alone. 



In the little cottage upon the Newburgh higt lands, 

 looking down upon the broad bay which the Hudson river 

 there makes, before winding in a narrow stream through 

 the highlands of West Point, and looking eastward across 

 the river to the Fishkill hiUs, which rise gradually from 

 the bank into a gentle mountain boldness, and northward, 

 up the river, to shores that do not obstruct the horizon, 

 passed the first years of the boy's life, thus early befriend- 

 ing him with one of the loveliest of landscapes. While his 

 father and brother were pruning and grafting their trees, 

 and the other brother was busily at work in the comb fac- 

 tory, where he was employed, the young Andrew ran alone 

 about the garden, playing his solitary games in the pre- 

 sence of the scene whose influence helped to mould his life, 

 and which, even so early, filled his mind with images of 

 rural beauty. His health, like that of most children born 

 in their parents' later years, was not at all robust. The 

 father, watching the slight form glancing among his trees, 

 and the mother, aware of her boy sitting silent and 

 thoughtful, had many a pang of apprehension, which 

 was not relieved by the ominous words of the gossips 

 that it was " hard to raise these smart children," the 

 homely modern echo of the old Greek fancy, " Whom the 

 gods love die young." 



