for the country was so strong that he retired from business in New
York as soon as he had won a modest competence. For forty-odd
years he never wearied in the cultivation of his little valley
farm, and the square, flower-bordered garden, at one side of which
ran an unfailing brook. In this garden and under his tuition I
acquired my love of horticulture--acquired it with many a
backache--heartache too, on days good for fishing or hunting; but,
taking the bitter with the sweet, the sweet predominated. I find
now that I think only of the old-fashioned roses in the borders,
and not of my hands bleeding from the thorns. If I groaned over
the culture of many vegetables, it was much compensation to a boy
that the dinner-table groaned also under the succulent dishes thus
provided. I observed that my father's interest in his garden and
farm never flagged, thus proving that in them is to be found a
pleasure which does not pall with age. During the last summer of
his life, when in his eighty-seventh year, he had the delight of a
child in driving over to my home in the early morning, long before
I was up, and in leaving a basket of sweet corn or some other
vegetable which he knew would prove his garden to be ahead of
mine.

My father was very simple and positive in his beliefs, always
openly foremost in the reform movements of his day and in his
neighborhood, yet never, to my knowledge, seeking or taking any
office. His house often became a station of the "underground
railroad" in slavery times, and on one night in the depth of
winter he took a hotly-pursued fugitive in his sleigh and drove
him five miles on the ice, diagonally across the Hudson, to
Fishkill, thence putting the brave aspirant for freedom on the way
to other friends. He incurred several risks in this act. It is