comes but I feel as near you as I did years and years ago when we were
young. (In those years _big_ fish bit in old Wiley Bancom's pond by the
railroad: they must have been two inches long!)--I would give a year's
growth to have the pleasure of having you here. You may be sure that
every one of my children along with me will look with an added reverence
toward the picture on the wall that greets me every morning, when we
have our little Christmas frolics--the picture that little Katharine
points to and says 'That's my grandmudder.'--The years, as they come,
every one, deepen my gratitude to you, as I better and better understand
the significance of life and every one adds to an affection that was
never small. God bless you.

"WALTER."

* * * * *

Such were the father and mother of Walter Hines Page; they were married
at Fayetteville, North Carolina, July 5, 1849; two children who preceded
Walter died in infancy. The latter was born at Cary, August 15, 1855.
Cary was a small village which Frank Page had created; in honour of the
founder it was for several years known as Page's Station; the father
himself changed the name to Cary, as a tribute to a temperance orator
who caused something of a commotion in the neighbourhood in the early
seventies. Cary was not then much of a town and has not since become
one; but it was placed amid the scene of important historical events.
Page's home was almost the last stopping place of Sherman's army on its
march through Georgia and the Carolinas, and the Confederacy came to an
end, with Johnston's surrender of the last Confederate Army, at Durham,
only fifteen miles from Page's home. Walter, a boy of ten, his brother
Robert, aged six, and the negro "companion" Tance--who figures as Sam in