nd Bancroft, he could quote from all of
them paragraphs at a time contrasting the views of different writers on
a given event, and remembering dates with unfailing accuracy. "He could
repeat the entire Bible," says Mrs. Stratton-Porter, "giving chapters
and verses, save the books of Generations; these he said 'were a waste
of gray matter to learn.' I never knew him to fail in telling where any
verse quoted to him was to be found in the Bible." And she adds: "I was
almost afraid to make these statements, although there are many living
who can corroborate them, until John Muir published the story of his
boyhood days, and in it I found the history of such rearing as was my
father's, told of as the customary thing among the children of Muir's
time; and I have referred many inquirers as to whether this feat were
possible, to the Muir book."

All his life, with no thought of fatigue or of inconvenience to
himself, Mark Stratton travelled miles uncounted to share what he had
learned with those less fortunately situated, by delivering sermons,
lectures, talks on civic improvement and politics. To him the love of
God could be shown so genuinely in no other way as in the love of his
fellowmen. He worshipped beauty: beautiful faces, souls, hearts,
beautiful landscapes, trees, animals, flowers. He loved colour: rich,
bright colour, and every variation down to the faintest shadings. He
was especially fond of red, and the author carefully keeps a cardinal
silk handkerchief that he was carrying when stricken with apoplexy at
the age of seventy-eight. "It was so like him," she comments, "to have
that scrap of vivid colour in his pocket. He never was too busy to
fertilize a flower bed or to dig holes for the setting of a tree or
bush. A word constantly on his lips was 'tidy.' It applied equally to a
woman, a house, a field, or a barn lot. He had a streak of genius in
his make-up: the genius of large appreciation. Over inspired Biblical
passages, over great books, over sunlit landscapes, over a white violet
abloom in deep shade, over a heroic deed of man, I have seen his brow
light up, his eyes shine."

Mrs. Porter tells us that her father was constantly reading aloud to
his children and to visitors descriptions of the great deeds of men.
Two "hair-raisers" she especially remembers with increased heart-beats
to this day were the story of John Maynard, who piloted a burning boat
to safety while he slowly roasted at the wheel. She says th