cheerful, intelligent cllildj but quiet and thoughtful, pet- 

 ted by the elder brothers an4 sister, standing sometimes 

 in the door, as he grew old.er, and watching the shadows 

 of the clouds chase feach other over the FishMll mountains 

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

 versal silence of the country, -while the constant occupation 

 of the fathej", and of the brother who worked, with him in 

 the nursery, inade the boy serious, by, necessarily leaving 

 him much aloije. , , 



In the little cottage upon the Newburgh highlands, 

 looking down upon the broad bay which the Hudsori river- 

 there makes, before winding in a narrow stream through 

 the liighl9,nds of West ,Point, and looking eastward across 

 the river to the Fishkill hiUs, which rise gradually fronj 

 the bank into a gentle mountain boldness, ,ahd northward, 

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

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

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

 father and brother were pruning and graf'ting their trees, 

 and the other brother was busily at work in the comb facr 

 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 tp mould his life, . 

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

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

 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 inany a pang of . apprehension, which 

 was not relieved by tlie ominous, words of the gossips 

 thS't it was "hard to raise these smart children,'' — ^the 

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

 gods love die young." 



