"You shall have a happy childhood," I vowed, "no matter what comes
later, you shall remember these days with unalloyed delight. They shall
be your heaven, your fairyland."

Each month I set down in my diary some new phrase, some development,
some significant event in her life, and when she found this out she
loved to have me read what she had said, "When I was a little baby." She
listened gravely, contrasting her ignorance at two with her wisdom at
five. "Was I cute, Daddy? Did you like me then?" she would ask.

She early learned the meaning of Decoration Day, which she called "Flag
Day," and took pride in the fact that her grand-sire was a soldier. Each
year she called for her flag and asked to be taken to the cemetery to
see the decorations and to hear the bugles blow above the graves, and I
always complied; although to me, each year, a more poignant pathos
quavered in the wailing cadence of "Lights out," and the passing of the
veterans, thinning so rapidly--was like the march of men toward their
open graves.

Happily my daughter did not realize any part of this tragic concept. For
her it was natural that a soldier should be old and bent. Waving her
little flag and shouting with silver-sweet voice she saluted with vague
admiration those who were about to die--an age about to die--and in her
eyes flamed the spirit of her grand-sire, the love of country which
will carry the Republic through every storm no matter from which quarter
the wind may spring.

So far as I could, I taught her to take up the traditions which were
about to slip from the hands of Richard Garland and his sons, "She shall
be our representative, the custodian of our faith."

For four years she remained our only child, and yet I can not say that
she was either spoiled or exacting, on the contrary she was a constant,
joyous pupil and a lovely appealing teacher. Through her I rediscovered
the wonder of the sunrise and the stars. In the study of her face the
lost beauty of the rainbow returned to me, in her presence I felt once
more the mystic charm of dusk. I reaccepted the universe, putting aside
the measureless horror of its recorded wars. I grew strangely selfish.
My interests narrowed to my own country, my own home, to my fireside.
Counting upon the world well lost, I built upon my daughter's love.

That my wife was equally happy in her parentage was obvious for at times
she treated Mary Isabel as if she were a doll, spending many hours of
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