a line from an old hymn--"Only a veil between."

She thought a good deal of some verses I wrote--"My Brother's
Farm"--and had them framed. (You have seen them in the parlor at
the Old Home. I wrote them in Washington the fall that you were
born. I was sick and forlorn at the time.)

I owe to Mother my temperament, my love of nature, my brooding,
introspective habit of mind--all those things which in a literary
man help to give atmosphere to his work. In her line were dreamers
and fishermen and hunters. One of her uncles lived alone in a little
house in the woods. His hut was doubtless the original Slabsides.
Grandfather Kelly was a lover of solitude, as all dreamers are, and
Mother's happiest days, I think, were those spent in the fields after
berries. The Celtic element, which I get mostly from her side, has
no doubt played an important part in my life. My idealism, my romantic
tendencies, are largely her gift.

On my father's side I find no fishermen or hermits or dreamers. I
find a marked religious strain, more active and outspoken than on
Mother's. The religion of the Kellys was, for the most part, of the
silent, meditative kind, but there are preachers and teachers and
scholars on Father's side--one of them, Stephen Burroughs (b. 1765),
a renegade preacher. Doubtless most of my own intellectual impetus
comes from this side of the family. There are also cousins and
second cousins on this side who became preachers, and some who
became physicians, but I recall none on the Kelly side.

In size and physical make-up I am much like my father. I have my
father's foot, and I detect many of his ways in my own. My loud and