the pit of her stomach, which I was
told old ladies sometimes suffer with. It was proper enough, I was
assured, for old ladies to nibble at crackers and peppermint
lozenges in meeting, but that such a proceeding would be very wicked
for a little boy."

From which it might appear that the atmosphere of Newfane, under the
grave and serious deportment of his grandmother, must have been a
change from the freedom Eugene and his brother enjoyed under the fond
rule of Miss French at Amherst. But when I was in Newfane in 1899 I was
informed by a dear old lady in bombazine, who remembered their visits
distinctly, that "Eugene and Roswell were wild boys. Not bad, but just
tew full of old Nick for anything."

[Illustration: THE HOMESTEAD AT AMHERST, MASS.
_Now owned by Mr. Hiram Eaton of New York._]

It was in Amherst, however, and not in Newfane, from Cousin Mary, and
not from his dear Grandmother Esther, that Eugene got the New England
"bent" in his Missouri mind. It is hard to separate the fact from the
fancy in his story of "My Grandmother." His youth from 1856 to 1865 was
lived in Amherst. His only visit to the Field homestead in Newfane was
when he was nine years old. And of this he has written, "we stayed
there seven months and the old lady got all the grandsons she wanted.
She did not invite us to repeat the visit." He also confessed that all
his love for nature dated from that visit. As a boy he would never have
been permitted to indulge the fondness for animal pets under "the dark
penetrating eyes" of his grandmother, that was tolerated and became a
life-habit by the "gracious love" of Mary Field French. Of this
fondness for pets, Roswell has written that it amounted to a passion.
"But unlike other boys he seemed to carry his pets into a higher sphere
and to give them personality. For each pet, whether dog, cat, bird,
goat, or squirrel--he had the family distrust of a horse--he not only
had a name, but it was his delight to fancy that each possessed a
peculiar dialect of human speech, and each he addressed in the humorous
manner conceived. When in childhood he was conducting a poultry annex
to the homestead, each chicken was properly instructed to respond to a
peculiar call, and Finniken, Minniken, Winniken, Dump, Poog, Boog
seemed to recognize immediately the queer intonations of their master
with an intelligence that is not usually accorded to chickens."

I cannot forbear to introduce here a characteristic