rom Yorktown, and lived to hear
the tramp of troops returning from the war of the great Rebellion. He
lived to speak the names of eighty children, grand-children and
great-grand-children. He died just three years from the day when my
mother sped on.

When my father lay dying the old country minister said to him, "Mr.
Talmage, how do you feel now as you are about to pass the Jordan of
death?" He replied--and it was the last thing he ever said--"I feel
well; I feel very well; all is well"--lifting his hand in a benediction,
a speechless benediction, which I pray God may go down through all the
generations--"It is well!"

Four of his sons became ministers of the Gospel: Reverend James R.
Talmage, D.D., who was preaching before I was born, and who died in
1879; Reverend John Van Nest Talmage, D.D., who spent his life as a
missionary in China, and died in the summer of 1892; Reverend Goyn
Talmage, D.D., who after doing a great work for God, died in 1891. But
all my brothers and sisters were decidedly Christian, lived usefully and
died peacefully.

I rejoice to remember that though my father lived in a plain house the
most of his days, he died in a mansion provided by the filial piety of
his son who had achieved a fortune.

The house at Gateville, near Bound Brook, in which I was born, has gone
down. Not one stone has been left upon another. I one day picked up a
fragment of the chimney, or wall, and carried it home. But the home that
I associate with my childhood was about three miles from Somerville,
N.J. The house, the waggon-shed, the barn, are now just as I remember
them from childhood days. It was called "Uncle John's Place" from the
fact that my mother's uncle, John Van Nest, owned it, and from him my
father rented it "on shares." Here I rode the horse to brook. Here I
hunted for and captured Easter eggs. Here the natural world made its
deepest impression on me. Here I learned some of the fatigues and
hardships of the farmer's life--not as I felt them, but as my father and
mother endured them. Here my brother Daniel brought home his bride. From
here I went to the country school. Here in the evening the family were
gathered, mother knitting or sewing, father vehemently talking politics
or religion with some neighbour not right on the subject of the tariff,
or baptism, and the rest of us reading or listening. All the group are
gone except my sister Catherine and myself.

My childhood, as I look back upon it, is to