ver the scene on certain occasions. This cellar was
on a level with a large kitchen where we played blind man's buff and
other games when the day's work was done. These two rooms are the center
of many of the merriest memories of my childhood days.

I can recall three colored men, Abraham, Peter, and Jacob, who acted as
menservants in our youth. In turn they would sometimes play on the banjo
for us to dance, taking real enjoyment in our games. They are all at
rest now with "Old Uncle Ned in the place where the good niggers go."
Our nurses, Lockey Danford, Polly Bell, Mary Dunn, and Cornelia
Nickeloy--peace to their ashes--were the only shadows on the gayety of
these winter evenings; for their chief delight was to hurry us off to
bed, that they might receive their beaux or make short calls in the
neighborhood. My memory of them is mingled with no sentiment of
gratitude or affection. In expressing their opinion of us in after
years, they said we were a very troublesome, obstinate, disobedient set
of children. I have no doubt we were in constant rebellion against their
petty tyranny. Abraham, Peter, and Jacob viewed us in a different light,
and I have the most pleasant recollections of their kind services.

In the winter, outside the house, we had the snow with which to build
statues and make forts, and huge piles of wood covered with ice, which
we called the Alps, so difficult were they of ascent and descent. There
we would climb up and down by the hour, if not interrupted, which,
however, was generally the case. It always seemed to me that, in the
height of our enthusiasm, we were invariably summoned to some
disagreeable duty, which would appear to show that thus early I keenly
enjoyed outdoor life. Theodore Tilton has thus described the place where
I was born: "Birthplace is secondary parentage, and transmits character.
Johnstown was more famous half a century ago than since; for then,
though small, it was a marked intellectual center; and now, though
large, it is an unmarked manufacturing town. Before the birth of
Elizabeth Cady it was the vice-ducal seat of Sir William Johnson, the
famous English negotiator with the Indians. During her girlhood it was
an arena for the intellectual wrestlings of Kent, Tompkins, Spencer,
Elisha Williams, and Abraham Van Vechten, who, as lawyers, were among
the chiefest of their time. It is now devoted mainly to the fabrication
of steel springs and buckskin gloves. So, like Wordsworth's