Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

IS6
ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
his new books and it required a satchelful for his studies. The
spirit of the school under the new professor was just what
Brother Joe needed to arouse him, and he entered with zest
into study.
Both brothers brought home their books every night for
study, and father would help Will by drilling him in his Latin,
so that his progress was even more rapid than otherwise. I
wish I could make my grandchildren and grandnephews and
nieces see our family group as we were when we gathered about
the wide fireplace in those long winter nights. The bright
fire leaped up; the light stand was brought out, two candles
were lighted, and we settled ourselves for the evening. In the
midst of our group would be our beloved parents — father
with his silver hair shining in the firelight, and mother's lying
so smoothly in soft, dark bands beneath her white lace cap.
How father's highly magnifying spectacles shone as he looked
up from an old copy of Caesar! Mother's kerchief was folded
neat and white across her breast, and that face of peace —
for me there has never been another like it, so full of interest,
so calm, so gentle! But once since have I seen such a pair
of brown eyes, both soft and bright; they look up at me from
the face of one of her great-grandchildren, my grandchild
Winifred.
In our mother's hands was usually a garment in process of
making or a piece of mending. We sisters sat in low chairs,
Ida in the little red chair that had lost its rockers and I in the
larger blue chair; she reading her school reader, and I struggling
with my knitting. Ah, how quiet is the little sister, but how
quick to hear a mispronunciation from the boys! Having
heard a mistake, however, she would but quietly smile. Joe
would be studying geography, and to our dear mother he
looked for help, for geography was her specialty; Will would
be reading Caesar in monotone. Oh, the happy evenings of
childhood, passing swiftly and long since gone!
Sometimes there in the candlelight father would stop to
recite a poem. One I hear over the lapse of years, with a
beat like an ocean throb, it is Derzhavin's "Ode to the Deity."
For the sake of the days that will never return, may I lead