all of which were flour stores. The Genesee Valley was a famous wheat
growing country in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the
grain was ground in Rochester and shipped down the Erie Canal to Albany,
the receiving and distributing center for the trade. My father made
business trips to New York, and, sometimes, as far east as Boston, in
those days a long journey. He usually arranged to go "down the river" in
the Spring, having, beside his own affairs, commissions to fill as
delegate to one or more of the May Conventions.

The May Conventions were annual gatherings of religious bodies,
philanthropic organizations, reform associations, literary associations,
educational associations and all sorts of associations for the
improvement of the human race in general and the American people in
particular. The Friends yearly Meeting, the Conference of the American
Anti-Slavery societies, the Grahamites or Vegetarians, the Temperance
advocates and other upholders of beneficent, benevolent, and Utopian
ideals assembled on these occasions, and with much eloquence, made it
clear to the meanest understanding that the universal adoption of the
principles especially professed by each would do away with all evil in
the world and bring about a return of the Golden Age.

My mother did not always attend the May Conventions, but whenever she
went, she took one of us children with her. My first visit to New York
was made as an unqualified member of the Albany delegation to something
or other, I forget what. One thing I do not forget, however, and that is
hearing Horace Greeley make an address, and afterward being puffed up
with pride when the orator chatted familiarly with his small admirer at
dinner in our hotel on Barclay Street.

When my mother was absent from home, the family was left in charge of