"How fertile and fruitful it is now, but how lonely and bleak the
old place looked in that winter landscape the night I drove up from
the station in the moonlight after hearing of Father's death! There
was a light in the window, but I knew Father would not meet me at
the door this time--beleaguering winter without, and Death within!

"Father and Mother! I think of them with inexpressible love and
yearning, wrapped in their last eternal sleep. They had, for them,
the true religion, the religion of serious, simple, hard-working.
God-fearing lives. To believe as they did, to sit in their pews, is
impossible to me--the Time-Spirit has decreed otherwise; but all I
am or can be or achieve is to emulate their virtues--my soul can be
saved only by a like truthfulness and sincerity."


The following data concerning his brothers and sisters were given
me by Mr. Burroughs in conversation:--

Hiram, born in 1827, was an unpractical man and a dreamer; he was
a bee-keeper. He showed great aptitude in the use of tools, could
make axe-handles, neck-yokes, and the various things used about
the farm, and was especially skilled in building stone walls.
But he could not elbow his way in a crowd, could not make farming
pay, and was always pushed to the wall. He cared nothing for
books, and although he studied grammar when a boy, and could
parse, he never could write a grammatical sentence. He died at
the age of seventy-five.

Olly Ann was about two years younger than Hiram. Mr. Burroughs
remembers her as a frail, pretty girl, with dark-brown eyes, a high