My father's doctor, my mother's doctor, in the village home! He carried
all the confidences of all the families for ten miles around. We all
felt better as soon as we saw him enter the house. His face pronounced a
beatitude before he said a word. He welcomed all of us children into
life, and he closed the old people's eyes.




THE SECOND MILESTONE

1845-1869


When moving out of a house I have always been in the habit, after
everything was gone, of going into each room and bidding it a mute
farewell. There are the rooms named after the different members of the
family. I suppose it is so in all households. It was so in mine; we
named the rooms after the persons who occupied them. I moved from the
house of my boyhood with a sort of mute affection for its remembrances
that are most vivid in its hours of crisis and meditation. Through all
the years that have intervened there is no holier sanctuary to me than
the memory of my mother's vacant chair. I remember it well. It made a
creaking noise as it moved. It was just high enough to allow us children
to put our heads into her lap. That was the bank where we deposited all
our hurts and worries.

Some time ago, in an express train, I shot past that old homestead. I
looked out of the window and tried to peer through the darkness. While I
was doing so, one of my old schoolmates, whom I had not seen for many