experience. Such is the effect of the spiritual sphere of good men,
in whom nature and character are harmonious. My father got his
appointment from Washington in the following March, 1853. His wife had
but one solicitude in leaving America; her mother was aged and in
delicate health, and their parting might be forever in this world. But
a month before the appointment was confirmed, her mother quietly and
painlessly died. It was as if she had wished not to be separated from
her beloved daughter, and had entered into the spiritual state in the
expectation of being nearer to her there than she could be in the
world. My mother always affirmed that she was conscious of her
mother's presence with her on momentous occasions during the remainder
of her own life.

June came; the farewells were said, we were railroaded to Boston,
embarked on the Cunard steamship Niagara, Captain Leitch, and steamed
out of Boston Harbor on a day of cloudlessness and calm. Incoming
vessels, drifting in the smoothness, saluted us with their flags, and
the idle seamen stared at us, leaning over their bulwarks. The last of
the low headlands grew dim and vanished in the golden haze of the
afternoon. "Go away, tiresome old land!" sang out my sister and
myself; but my father, standing beside us, gazing westward with a
serious look, bade us be silent. Two hundred and twenty years had
passed since our first ancestor had sought freedom on those
disappearing shores, and our father was the first of his descendants
to visit the Old Home whence he came. What was to be the outcome? But
the children only felt that the ocean was pleasant and strange, and
they longed to explore it. The future and the past did not concern
them.