bonfire made of all he had in the world that could make a home or
ornament it.

Among the earliest stories which were told me in the nursery, I
recollect the martyrdom of Nat Turner,--how Lovejoy, by night, but in
light, was sent quite beyond the reach of human pelting,--and all the
things which Toussaint did, with no white man, but with the whitest
spirit of all, to help him. As to minor sufferers for the cause of
Freedom, I should know that we must have entertained Abolitionists at
our house largely, since even at this day I find it hard to rid myself
of an instinctive impression that the common way of testifying
disapprobation of a lecturer in a small country-town is to bombard him
with obsolete eggs, carried by the audience for that purpose. I saw many
at my father's table who had enjoyed the honors of that ovation.

I was four years old when I learned that my father combined the two
functions of preaching in a New England college town and ticket-agency
on the Underground Railroad. Four years old has a sort of literal
mindedness about it. Most little boys that I knew had an idea that
professors of religion and professors in college were the same, and that
a real Christian always had to wear black and speak Greek. So I could be
pardoned for going down cellar and watching behind old hogsheads by the
hour to see where the cars came in.

A year after that I casually saw my first passenger, but regretted not
also to have seen whether he came up by the coal-bin or the meat-safe.
His name was Isidore Smith; so, to protect him from Smith, my father,
being a conscientious man, baptized him into a liberty to say that his
name was John Peterson. I held the blue bowl which served for font. To
this day I feel a sort of semi-accountability for John Peterson. I have
asked after him every time I have crossed the Suspension Bridge since I
grew up. In holding that baptismal bowl I suppose I am, in a sense, his
godfather. Half a godfather is better than none, and in spite of my size
I was a very earnest one.

There are few godchildren for whom I should have had to renounce fewer
sins than for thee, brave John Peterson!

John Peterson had been baptized before. No sprinkling that, but an
immersion in hell! He had to strip to show it to us. All down his back
were welts in which my father might lay his finger; and one gash healed
with a scar into which I could put my small, boyish fist. The former
were made by the whip and branding-