about that conflict, my father being a strong Lincoln Republican; and
once, when I felt that I had been wronged by maternal discipline during
the day, I attempted a partial vengeance by praying with loud fervor
for the success of the Union arms, when we all came to say our prayers
before my mother in the evening. She was not only a most devoted mother,
but was also blessed with a strong sense of humor, and she was too much
amused to punish me; but I was warned not to repeat the offense, under
penalty of my father's being informed--he being the dispenser of serious
punishment. Morning prayers were with my father. We used to stand at the
foot of the stairs, and when father came down we called out, "I speak
for you and the cubby-hole too!" There were three of us young children,
and we used to sit with father on the sofa while he conducted morning
prayers. The place between father and the arm of the sofa we called the
"cubby-hole." The child who got that place we regarded as especially
favored both in comfort and somehow or other in rank and title. The two
who were left to sit on the much wider expanse of sofa on the other side
of father were outsiders for the time being.

My aunt Anna, my mother's sister, lived with us. She was as devoted to
us children as was my mother herself, and we were equally devoted to her
in return. She taught us our lessons while we were little. She and
my mother used to entertain us by the hour with tales of life on
the Georgia plantations; of hunting fox, deer, and wildcat; of the
long-tailed driving horses, Boone and Crockett, and of the riding
horses, one of which was named Buena Vista in a fit of patriotic
exaltation during the Mexican War; and of the queer goings-on in the
Negro quarters. She knew all the "Br'er Rabbit" stories, and I was
brought up on them. One of my uncles, Robert Roosevelt, was much struck
with them, and took them down from her dictation, publishing them in
_Harper's_, where they fell flat. This was a good many years before a