The house at Gateville, near Bound Brook, in which I was born, has gone
down. Not one stone has been left upon another. I one day picked up a
fragment of the chimney, or wall, and carried it home. But the home that
I associate with my childhood was about three miles from Somerville,
N.J. The house, the waggon-shed, the barn, are now just as I remember
them from childhood days. It was called "Uncle John's Place" from the
fact that my mother's uncle, John Van Nest, owned it, and from him my
father rented it "on shares." Here I rode the horse to brook. Here I
hunted for and captured Easter eggs. Here the natural world made its
deepest impression on me. Here I learned some of the fatigues and
hardships of the farmer's life--not as I felt them, but as my father and
mother endured them. Here my brother Daniel brought home his bride. From
here I went to the country school. Here in the evening the family were
gathered, mother knitting or sewing, father vehemently talking politics
or religion with some neighbour not right on the subject of the tariff,
or baptism, and the rest of us reading or listening. All the group are
gone except my sister Catherine and myself.

My childhood, as I look back upon it, is to me a mystery. While I always
possessed a keen sense of the ludicrous, and a hearty appreciation of
fun of all sorts, there was a sedate side of my nature that demonstrated
itself to the older members of the family, and of which they often
spoke. For half days, or whole days, at a time I remember sitting on a
small footstool beside an ordinary chair on which lay open "Scott's
Commentaries on the Bible." I not only read the Scriptures out of this
book, but long discourses of Thomas Scott, and passages adjoining. I
could not have understood much of these profound and elaborate
commentaries. They were not written or printed for children, but they
had for my childish mind a fascination that kept me from play, and from
the ordinary occupations of persons of my years.