hought of your dying before.
I love my dear children although they are small
And you, my dear wife, I love greatest of all.

Refrain (both together)

We'll stay on the farm and we'll suffer no loss
For the stone that keeps rolling will gather no moss.

This song was not an especial favorite of my father. Its minor strains
and its expressions of womanly doubts and fears were antipathetic to his
sanguine, buoyant, self-confident nature. He was inclined to ridicule
the conclusions of its last verse and to say that the man was a
molly-coddle--or whatever the word of contempt was in those days. As an
antidote he usually called for "O'er the hills in legions, boys," which
exactly expressed his love of exploration and adventure.

This ballad which dates back to the conquest of the Allegheny mountains
opens with a fine uplifting note,

Cheer up, brothers, as we go
O'er the mountains, westward ho,
Where herds of deer and buffalo
Furnish the fare.

and the refrain is at once a bugle call and a vision:

Then o'er the hills in legions, boys,
Fair freedom's star
Points to the sunset regions, boys,
Ha, ha, ha-ha!

and when my mother's clear voice rose on the notes of that exultant
chorus, our hearts responded with a surge of emotion akin to that which
sent the followers of Daniel Boone across the Blue Ridge, and lined the
trails of Kentucky and Ohio with the canvas-covered wagons of the
pioneers.

A little farther on in the song came these words,

When we've wood and prairie land,
Won by our toil,
We'll reign like kings in fairy land,
Lords of the soil!

which always produced in my mind the picture of a noble farm-house in a
park-like valley, just as the line, "Well have our rifles ready, boys,"
expressed the boldness and self-reliance of an armed horseman.

The significance of this song in the lives of the McClintocks and the
Garlands cannot be measured. It was the marching song of my
Grandfather's generation and undoubtedly profoundly influenced my father
and my uncles in all that they did. It suggested shining mountains, and
grassy vales, swarming with bear and elk. It called to green savannahs
and endless flowery glades. It voiced as no other song did, the pioneer
impulse throbbing deep in my father's blood. That its words will not
bear close inspection today takes little from its power. Unquestionably
it was a directing force in the lives