ur forerunners, except that they behaved well, came
over from Wales or Holland a good while ago, and died when their time came.
Some of them may have had fine equipage and caparisoned postillion, but the
most of them were only footmen. My father started in life belonging to the
aristocracy of hard knuckles and homespun, but had this high honor that no
one could despise. He was the son of a father who loved God, and kept His
commandments. What is the House of Hapsburg or Stuarts, compared with
being son of the Lord God Almighty? Two eyes, two hands, and two feet,
were the capital my father started with. For fifteen years an invalid, he
had a fearful struggle to support his large family. Nothing but faith in
God upheld him. His recital of help afforded, and deliverances wrought,
was more like a romance than a reality. He walked through many a desert,
but every morning had its manna, and every night it's pillar of fire, and
every hard rock a rod that could shatter it into crystal fountains at his
feet. More than once he came to his last dollar; but right behind that
last dollar he found Him who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and out
of the palm of whose hand all the fowls of heaven peck their food, and who
hath given to each one of His disciples a warrantable deed for the whole
universe in the words, 'All are yours.'

"The path that led him through financial straits, prepared him also for
sore bereavements. The infant of days was smitten, and he laid it into the
river of death with as much confidence as infant Moses was laid into the
Ark of the Nile, knowing that soon from the royal palace a shining One
would come to fetch it.

"In an island of the sea, among strangers, almost unattended, death came to
a beloved son; and though I remember the darkness that dropped on the
household when the black-sealed letter was opened, I remember also the
utterances of Christian submission.

"Another bearing his own name, just on the threshold of manhood, his heart
beating high with hope, falls into the dust; but above the cries of early
widowhood and the desolation of that dark day, I hear the patriarch's
prayer, commending children, and children's children, to the Divine
sympathy.

"But a deeper shadow fell across the old home-stead. The 'Golden Wedding'
had been celebrated nine years before. My mother looked up, pushed back
her spectacles, and said, 'Just think of it, father! We have been together
fifty-nine years!' The twain