Whether he was then kind or cross to me or to my mother I can not
remember. Probably my mind was too young to notice any difference less
than that between love and cruelty. I know I was happy; and it seems to
me that the chief reason of my joy was the new cap and the fact that my
heart swelled and I was proud of myself. I do not believe that I was
more than three years old. All this may be partly a dream; but I
think not.

John Rucker was no dream. He was my mother's second husband; and by the
time I was five years old, and had begun to go to one little school
after another as we moved about, John Rucker had become the dark cloud
in my life. He paid little attention to me, but I recollect that by the
time we had settled ourselves at Tempe I was afraid of him. Two or three
times he whipped me, but no more severely than was the custom among
parents. Other little boys were whipped just as hard, and still were not
afraid of their fathers. I think now that I was afraid of him because my
mother was. I can not tell how he looked then, except that he was a tall
stooped man with a yellowish beard all over his face and talked in a
sort of whine to others, and in a sharp domineering way to my mother. To
me he scarcely ever spoke at all. At Tempe he had some sort of a shop in
which he put up a dark-colored liquid--a patent medicine--which he sold
by traveling about the country. I remember that he used to complain of
lack of money and of the expense of keeping me; and that my mother made
clothes for people in the village.

Tempe was a little village near the Erie Canal somewhere between Rome
and Syracuse. There was a dam and water-power in Tempe or near there,
which, I think, was the overflow from a reservoir built as a
water-supply for the Erie Canal--but I am not sure. I can not find Tempe
on the map; but many names have been changed since those days. I think