hold it with such skill, that I might tell of my grandfather properly
and gratefully, and describe him as the gentle and brave man he was. I
know he was gentle, for though I never had a woman to care for me as a
mother cares for a son, I never missed that care; and I know how brave
he was, for that is part of the history of my country. During many
years he was my only parent or friend or companion; he taught me my
lessons by day and my prayers by night, and, when I passed through all
the absurd ailments to which a child is heir, he sat beside my cot and
lulled me to sleep, or told me stories of the war. There was a
childlike and simple quality in his own nature, which made me reach
out to him and confide in him as I would have done to one of my own
age. Later, I scoffed at this virtue in him as something old-fashioned
and credulous. That was when I had reached the age when I was older, I
hope, than I shall ever be again. There is no such certainty of
knowledge on all subjects as one holds at eighteen and at eighty, and
at eighteen I found his care and solicitude irritating and irksome.
With the intolerance of youth, I could not see the love that was back
of his anxiety, and which should have softened it for me with a halo
and made me considerate and grateful. Now I see it--I see it now that
it is too late. But surely he understood, he knew how I looked up to
him, how I loved him, and how I tried to copy him, and, because I
could not, consoled myself inwardly by thinking that the reason I had
failed was because his way was the wrong one, and that my way was the
better. If he did not understand then, he understands now; I cannot
bear to think he does not understand and forgive me.

Those were the best days of my life, the days I spent with him as a
child in his own home on the Hudson. It stands at Dobbs Ferry, set in
a grove of pines, with a garden about it, and a box hedge that shuts
it from the road. The room I best remember is the one that overlooks