rarely safe to drive on the river off the beaten tracks at night,
for there are usually air-holes, and the strong tides are
continually making changes in the ice. When told that he might be
sent to jail for his defiance of the Fugitive Slave Law, he
quietly answered, "I can go to jail." The thing he could not do
was to deny the man's appeal to him for help. Before the war he
was known as an Abolitionist--after it, as a Conservative, his
sympathy with and for the South being very strong. During the
draft riots in 1863 the spirit of lawlessness was on the point of
breaking out in the river towns. I happened to be home from
Virginia, and learned that my father's house was among those
marked for burning on a certain night. During this night the horde
gathered; but one of their leaders had received such empathetic
warning of what would happen the following day should outrages be
perpetrated, that he persuaded his associates to desist. I sat up
that night at my father's door with a double-barrelled gun, more
impressed with a sense of danger than at any other time in my
experience; he, on the contrary, slept as quietly as a child.

He often practiced close economy in order to give his sons a good
education. The one act of my life which I remember with unalloyed
pride and pleasure occurred while I was at boarding-school in
Vermont, preparing for college. I learned through my mother that
my father had denied himself his daily newspaper; and I knew well
how much he would miss it. We burned wood in the large stone
seminary building. Every autumn great ranks of hard maple were
piled up, and students who wished to earn a little money were paid
a dollar a cord for sawing it into three lengths. I applied for
nine cords, and went at the unaccustomed task after study hours.
My back aches yet as I recall the experiences of subsequent weeks,