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

314
ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
upheaval in some remote period has transformed the earth's
surface into rugged rocks and deep fissures. Here wild flowers
and beautiful ferns cling, and birds flit among its solitudes.
We spread our table under the overshadowing trees and had a
happy day together. Julia always enjoyed excursions of this
kind when she saw something new, being very appreciative of
any addition to her knowledge of nature or art. All day we
wandered among these interesting scenes and drove home in
the evening declaring our picnic a success.
At that time our sister seemed to be quite well and strong,
and as we parted and she mounted a seat on the stage to go to
the railroad station, I thought she would, like her father's
family, live to be eighty; but not so, for before another summer
she was gone from this earth. She was a good and faithful
mother, and brought up a large family uncomplainingly. Six
of her eight children grew to maturity, and I recall the devotion
she gave them in their helpless childhood. Victor, the sixth
child, died when he was about six months old; the next baby,
a little girl named Grace Darling, was taken away at the age
of eighteen months by infantile paralysis.
Julia tarried with her children three years after our broth-
er's passing, growing weaker and weaker toward the end,
until on February 23, 1902, upon the sixty-eighth anniversary
of her birth, she left her daughters and son without
either of the parents they had loved and honored. I go
back and trace the course of their life together — William and
Julia: for twenty-eight years William followed his chosen profession.
We have told of the days when he taught in country
schools; later he became superintendent of schools in diff'erent
towns in Ohio — Galion, Lebanon, McArthur, Middletov/n,
and Pomeroy. He went to reside in Dayton, Ohio, in 1873,
and for three years was principal of one of the largest district
schools in that city. Later he became professor of modern
languages in the Dayton High School, where he taught for
twelve years. I tried to picture, in one of my early chapters,
William and me as we stood before the map of the world in our
old sitting room at home, and told that from his childish tongue
the names of far-away places rolled. More than half a century