I remember, that showed his poise and courage as
nothing else could. He was Sheriff of Somerset County, N.J., and we
lived in the court house, attached to which was the County Jail. During
my father's absence one day a prisoner got playing the maniac, dashing
things to pieces, vociferating horribly, and flourishing a knife with
which he had threatened to carve any one who came near the wicket of his
prison, Constables were called in to quell this real or dramatised
maniac, but they fell back in terror from the door of the prison. Their
show of firearms made no impression upon the demented wretch. After
awhile my father returned and was told of the trouble, and indeed he
heard it before he reached home. The whole family implored him not to
go near the man who was cursing, and armed with a knife. But father
could not be deterred. He did not stand outside the door and at a safe
distance, but took the key and opened the door, and without any weapon
of defence came upon the man, thundering at him, "Sit down and give me
that knife!" The tragedy was ended. I never remember to have heard him
make a gloomy remark. This was not because he had no perception of the
pollutions of society. I once said to my father, "Are people so much
worse now than they used to-be?" He made no answer for a minute, for the
old people do not like to confess much to the boys. But after awhile his
eye twinkled and he said: "Well, DeWitt, the fact is that people were
never any better than they ought to be."

Ours was an industrious home. I was brought up to regard laziness as an
abominable disease. Though we were some years of age before we heard the
trill of a piano, we knew well all about the song of "The
Spinning-Wheel."

Through how many thrilling scenes my father had passed! He stood, at
Morristown, in the choir that chanted when George Washington was buried;
talked with young men whose fathers he had held on his knee; watched the
progress of John Adams's administration; denounced, at the time, Aaron
Burr's infamy; heard the guns that celebrated the New Orleans victory;
voted against Jackson, but lived long enough to wish we had another just
like him; remembered when the first steamer struck the North river with
its wheel-buckets; was startled by the birth of telegraphy; saw the
United States grow from a speck on the world's map till all nations dip
their flag at our passing merchantmen. He was born while the
Revolutionary cannon were coming home f