s in the public archives his autobiography, we are incited to
inquire of what worth may be his self-laudation, and what the animus
that winged from the grave so cruel a shaft at his child's good name.
That he was of strict integrity in business relations, a citizen of no
mean "credit and renown" is true, but beneath this respectable cloak we
find on contemporary authority a man close and arbitrary in his family
and by no means impeccable in morality. One incident lets in light on
his amiable domestic relations. His wife having long expressed a wish
for a carriage, he at length imported an English chariot, but no horses
were forthcoming, and in answer to her remonstrances he said, "I never
promised you any horses;" so the chariot remained in the coach-house for
the rest of his life.

Mrs. Patterson came of that sturdy, independent Scotch-Irish race that
has peopled Pennsylvania's prosperous valleys. Her grandmother, Mrs.
Galbraith, was of remarkable force of character, taking a prominent part
in Revolutionary stir, and on one occasion traversing on horseback the
then almost wilderness to canvass votes for her husband's election to
the Assembly, which she won--whether by robust argument or in the
felicitous way of the beautiful duchess of Devonshire is not recorded.
To Mrs. Patterson--tender, religious and well cultured--her daughter
owes her familiarity with English and French classics, becoming versed
in the literature of Queen Anne's Augustan age, and able when ten years
old to recite from memory a large portion of that tough morsel, Young's
_Night Thoughts_, a page of which she recently repeated to a friend with
the remark that she "had not seen the poem for seventy-five years." She
learned Rochefoucauld's _Maxims_ by heart--an unfortunate guide, to whom
doubtless she partly owes her cynical appreciation of human motives.
She possessed a quick, logical mind and prodigious memory, while passing
years developed sparkling wit, fascinating manners and woman's crown of
beauty. This gifted child was repressed by her father with strange
bitterness, as if unnaturally jealous of her talent. In what consisted
her "folly, misconduct and disobedience"? The wayward self-will of a
mere girl could hardly merit such stern reprisal. She had barely reached
womanhood when she made the marriage on which his heart was set, which
he instigated and urged forward, allured by the alliance of his name
with that already reechoing through the wor