CHAPTER I.

THE CHILD AND THE GIRL.

1818-1839.

I. Birth-place and Ancestry. Seth Payson. Edward Payson. His Mother. A
Sketch of his Life and Character. The Fervor of his Piety. Despondent
Moods and their Cause. Bright, natural Traits. How he prayed and
preached. Conversational Gift. Love to Christ. Triumphant Death.


Mrs. Prentiss was fortunate in the place of her birth. She first saw the
light at Portland, Maine. Maine was then a district of Massachusetts,
and Portland was its chief town and seaport, distinguished for beauty of
situation, enterprise, intelligence, social refinement and all the best
qualities of New England character. Not a few of the early settlers had
come from Cape Cod and other parts of the old Bay State, and the blood
of the Pilgrim Fathers ran in their veins. Among its leading citizens at
that time were such men as Stephen Longfellow, Simon Greenleaf, Prentiss
Mellen, Samuel Fessenden, Ichabod Nichols, Edward Payson, and Asa
Cummings; men eminent for private and public virtue, and some of whom
were destined to become still more widely known, by their own growing
influence, or by the genius of their children.

But while favored in the place of her birth, Mrs. Prentiss was more
highly favored still in her parentage. For more than half a century the
name of her father has been a household word among the churches not of