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

CHANGES IN THE OLD HOME 219
and gradually we adapted ourselves to the changed conditions.
The next Sunday we went to church where father had preached
for twenty-five years, the church of our nativity. War had
been declared, and you could feel its thrill as soon as you
entered the church. Old friends with anxious faces began to
meet us and tell us of their fears. I remember how father
with many tears admonished his brethren to be sober and
"watch unto prayer," to remember the Kingdom of Peace was
the one to which they had vowed loyalty. A "Peace Democrat"
gave us some secession sentiments, but our father added
some good counsel, the best he knew; for one could but feel
the awful calamity that had already begun its fiery march to
despoil our fair land. That was for me the last Sunday in the
church of my childhood, as the next Sunday was to be my
wedding day.