said were written by my great-grandmother. But because my great-grandmother
wrote a stray sonnet and an occasional riddle, it was no sign that she
inherited a spark from Hannah More, or was her relative.

John and Marion Moor McNeil had a daughter, who perpetuated her mother's
name. This second Marion McNeil in due time was married to an Englishman,
named Joseph Baker, and so became my paternal grandmother, the Scotch and
English elements thus mingling in her children.

Mrs. Marion McNeil Baker was reared among the Scotch Covenanters, and had
in her character that sturdy Calvinistic devotion to Protestant liberty
which gave those religionists the poetic daring and pious picturesqueness
which we find so graphically set forth in the pages of Sir Walter Scott and
in John Wilson's sketches.

Joseph Baker and his wife, Marion McNeil, came to America seeking "freedom
to worship God;" though they could hardly have crossed the Atlantic more
than a score of years prior to the Revolutionary period.

With them they brought to New England a heavy sword, encased in a brass
scabbard, on which was inscribed the name of a kinsman upon whom the weapon
had been bestowed by Sir William Wallace, from whose patriotism and bravery
comes that heart-stirring air, "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled."

My childhood was also gladdened by one of my Grandmother Baker's books,
printed in olden type and replete with the phraseology current in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Among grandmother's treasures were some newspapers, yellow with age. Some
of these, however, were not very ancient, nor had they crossed the ocean;
for they were American newspapers, one of which contained a full account of
the death and burial of George Washington.

A relative of my Grandfather Baker was General Henry Knox of Revolutionary
fame. I was fond of listening, when a child, to grandmother's stories about
General Knox, for whom she cherished a high regard.

In the line of my Grandmother Baker's family was the late Sir John
Macneill, a Scotch knight, who was prominent in British politics, and at
one time held the position of ambassador to Persia.

My grandparents were likewise connected with Capt. John Lovewell of
Dunstable, New Hampshire, whose gallant leadership and death, in the Indian
troubles of 1722-1725, caused that prolonged contest to be known
historically as Lovewell's War.

A cousin of my grandmother was John Macneil, the New Hampshire general