ose times--the three R's--and taught school one or
two winters. His reading was the Bible and hymn-book, his weekly secular
paper, and a monthly religious paper.

He used to say that as a boy he was a very mean one, saucy, quarrelsome,
and wicked, liked horse-racing and card-playing--both alike disreputable
in those times. In early manhood he "experienced religion" and joined
the Old-School Baptist Church, of which his parents were members, and
then all his bad habits seem to have been discarded. He stopped swearing
and Sabbath-breaking, and other forms of wickedness, and became an
exemplary member of the community. He was a man of unimpeachable
veracity; bigoted and intolerant in his religious and political views,
but a good neighbor, a kind father, a worthy citizen, a fond husband,
and a consistent member of his church. He improved his farm, paid his
debts, and kept his faith. He had no sentiment about things and was
quite unconscious of the beauties of nature over which we make such an
ado. "The primrose by the river's brim" would not have been seen by him
at all. This is true of most farmers; the plough and the hoe and the
scythe do not develop their aesthetic sensibilities; then, too, in the
old religious view the beauties of this world were vain and foolish.

I have said that my father had strong religious feeling. He took "The
Signs of the Times" for over forty years, reading all those experiences
with the deepest emotion. I remember when a mere lad hearing him pray in
the hog-pen. It was a time of unusual religious excitement with him, no
doubt; I heard, and ran away, knowing it was not for me to hear.

Father had red hair, and a ruddy, freckled face. He was tender-hearted
and tearful, but with blustering ways and a harsh, strident voice.
Easily moved to emotion, he was as transparent as a child, with a
child's lack of self-consciousness. Unsophisticated, he had no art to
conceal anything, no guile, and, as Mother used to say, no manners. "All
I ever had," Father would rejoin, "for I've never used any of them." I
doubt if he ever said "Thank you" in his life; I certainly never heard
him. He had nothing to conceal, and could not understand that others
might have. I have heard him ask people what certain things cost, men
their politics, women their ages, with the utmost ingenuousness. One day
when he and I were in Poughkeepsie, we met a strange lad on the street
with very red hair, and Father said to him, "I can