I remember, on my return from Dr. Holmes's seventieth birthday
breakfast, in 1879, a remark of father's. He had overheard me
telling sister Abigail about the breakfast, and he declared: "I
had rather go to hear old Elder Jim Mead preach two hours, if he
was living, than attend all the fancy parties in the world." He
said he had heard him preach when he did not know whether he was
in the body or out of the body. The elder undoubtedly had a strong
natural eloquence.

Although Father never spoke to me of my writings, Abigail once told
me that when she showed him a magazine with some article of mine in,
and accompanied by a photograph of me, he looked at it a long time;
he said nothing, but his eyes filled with tears.

He went to school to the father of Jay Gould, John Gould--the first
child born in the town of Roxbury (about 1780 or 1790).

He married Amy Kelly, my mother, in 1827. He was six years her
senior. She lived over in Red Kill where he had taught school,
and was one of his pupils. I have often heard him say: "I rode
your Uncle Martin's old sorrel mare over to her folks' when I went
courting her." When he would be affectionate toward her before
others, Mother would say, "Now, Chauncey, don't be foolish."

Father bought the farm of 'Riah Bartram's mother, and moved on it
in 1827. In a house that stood where the Old Home does now, I was
born, April 3, 1837. It was a frame house with three or four rooms
below and one room "done off" above, and a big chamber. I was the
fifth son and the seventh child of my parents.