CHILDHOOD II 



Once a wonderful ship entered the harbor; it 

 was the Great Eastern, then a miracle of naval 

 architecture. On the day of its arrival we were 

 all taken up to this platform to see the coming of 

 this ship and the ceremonies attending its wel- 

 come by New York. 



The summer before my father died he had re- 

 moved to Scotch Plains, New Jersey, where he 

 had bought a farm ; and that autumn my Uncle 

 John, my mother's brother, came there for sport, 

 — the shooting of game birds, — and though I 

 was not five years old, the woodcock and quail 

 which he brought home from his excursions are 

 realities to me still. The long bill of the wood- 

 cock, his large, mild, deerlike eye placed high up 

 on the side of his head, was one of the things 

 that first impressed me ; and I never now see the 

 white throat of a quail without recalling the 

 quail as they were taken from my uncle's game- 

 bag so long ago. 



Shortly after my father's death my mother 

 returned to Grandmother Cornell's house to live. 

 As my mother's father died long before I was 

 born, I have no recollection of him ; but my 

 mother's mother — Grandmother Cornell, as we 

 called her — outlived my mother many years, and 

 died in 1896 at the advanced age of ninety-three 

 years. She was a notable housewife of the old 

 school; and I recall as boy and man the daily 



