a Sunday, I have sown my turnips ever since 1855. Everybody knows the
old rhyme:

"On the twenty-seventh of July
Sow your turnips, wet or dry."

And wet or dry, my parents in Ulster County, long, long ago, sowed their
little red turnip on that date.

I often wonder what sort of dwelling it was, and whether the July heat
was not pretty hard on my poor mother. I think of this every birthday.
I guess a habit of mind has grown up which I shall never break off; the
moment I begin sowing turnips I think of my mother bringing forth her
only child in the heat of dog-days, and of the sweat of suffering on her
forehead as she listened to my first cry. She is more familiar to me,
and really dearer in this imaginary scene than in almost any real memory
I have of her.

I do not remember Ulster County at all. My first memory of my mother is
of a time when we lived in a little town the name and location of which
I forget; but it was by a great river which must have been the Hudson I
guess. She had made me a little cap with a visor and I was very proud of
it and of myself. I picked up a lump of earth in the road and threw it
over a stone fence, covered with vines that were red with autumn
leaves--woodbine or poison-ivy I suppose. I felt very big, and ran on
ahead of my mother until she called to me to stop for fear of my falling
into the water. We had come down to the big river. I could hardly see
the other side of it. The whole scene now grows misty and dim; but I
remember a boat coming to the shore, and out of it stepped John Rucker.