of at least three generations of
my pioneering race. Its strains will be found running through this book
from first to last, for its pictures continued to allure my father on
and on toward "the sunset regions," and its splendid faith carried him
through many a dark vale of discontent.

Our home was a place of song, notwithstanding the severe toil which was
demanded of every hand, for often of an evening, especially in winter
time, father took his seat beside the fire, invited us to his knees, and
called on mother to sing. These moods were very sweet to us and we
usually insisted upon his singing for us. True, he hardly knew one tune
from another, but he had a hearty resounding chant which delighted us,
and one of the ballads which we especially like to hear him repeat was
called _Down the Ohio_. Only one verse survives in my memory:

The river is up, the channel is deep,
The winds blow high and strong.
The flash of the oars, the stroke we keep,
As we row the old boat along,
Down the O-h-i-o.

Mother, on the contrary, was gifted with a voice of great range and
sweetness, and from her we always demanded _Nettie Wildwood_, _Lily
Dale_, _Lorena_ or some of Root's stirring war songs. We loved her
noble, musical tone, and yet we always enjoyed our father's tuneless
roar. There was something dramatic and moving in each of his ballads. He
made the words mean so much.

It is a curious fact that nearly all of the ballads which the
McClintocks and other of these powerful young sons of the border loved
to sing were sad. _Nellie Wildwood_, _Minnie Minturn_, _Belle Mahone_,
_Lily Dale_ were all concerned with dead or dying maidens or with
mocking birds still singing o'er their graves. Weeping willows and
funeral urns ornamented the cover of each mournful ballad. Not one
smiling face peered forth from the pages of _The Home Diadem_.

Lonely like a withered tree,
What is all the world to me?
Light and life were all in thee,
Sweet Belle Mahone,

wailed stalwart David and buxom Deborah, and ready tears moistened my
tanned plump cheeks.

Perhaps it was partly by way of contrast that the jocund song of
_Freedom's Star_ always meant so much to me, but however it came about,
I am perfectly certain that it was an immense subconscious force in the
life of my father as it had been in the westward marching of the
McClintocks. In my own thinking it became at once a vision and a lure.

The on