and Susquehanna.

Hither came, toward the close of the eighteenth century,
a body of sturdy New Englanders, and, among them, my
grandfathers and grandmothers. Those on my father's
side: Asa White and Clara Keep, from Munson, Massa-
chusetts; those on my mother's side, Andrew Dickson,
from Middlefield, Massachusetts, and Ruth Hall from
Guilford, Connecticut. They were all of ``good stock.''
When I was ten years old I saw my great-grandfather at
Middlefield, eighty-two years of age, sturdy and vigorous;
he had mowed a broad field the day before, and he walked
four miles to church the day after. He had done his duty
manfully during the war, had been a member of the
``Great and General Court'' of Massachusetts, and had
held various other offices, which showed that he enjoyed
the confidence of his fellow-citizens. As to the other side
of the house, there was a tradition that we came from
Peregrine White of the Mayflower; but I have never had
time to find whether my doubts on the subject were well
founded or not. Enough for me to know that my yeomen
ancestors did their duty in war and peace, were honest,
straightforward, God-fearing men and women, who
owned their own lands, and never knew what it was to
cringe before any human being.

These New Englanders literally made the New York
wilderness to blossom as the rose; and Homer, at my
birth in 1832, about forty years after the first settlers
came, was, in its way, one of the prettiest villages