shield her from the rain which poured through the dilapidated roof,
and when the dreary light of that Sunday morning dawned, my frail bark
was launched on the stormy, sullen sea of life.

My father, a good man, but a ne'er-do-well financially, had loaned his
best clothes, watch and pocketbook to a friend to enable him to call
on his best girl in captivating style, and said friend expressed his
gratitude by eloping with the girl and all the borrowed finery.

That same night the boom broke, and allowed all the savings of our
family invested in logs, cut by my father and his lumbermen, to float
down the river and be lost in the sea.

Thus storm, flood, calamity and sorrow, far in advance heralded the
future of myself, the fourth son of a fourth son who, on that Sunday,
in the dog-days of 1841, reluctantly came into this world.

The howling of the wolves in the surrounding wild-woods, the screaming
of the catamounts in the near-by tree-tops, the sterile dog-star
drying up the crops, the marching of my father to fight in the
threatened Aroostook war, all conspired for months before this fateful
night to awaken a restlessness, discontent, and gloomy forebodings in
the lonely mother's heart which prenatal influences impressed upon the
mind of the baby yet unborn.

All through that wretched summer, scorching drought alternating
with cloud-bursts vied with each other in blasting the hopes of the
farmers, and premature frost destroyed the few remaining stalks of
corn, so that when the winter snows came, gaunt famine stared our
family fiercely in the face.