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

OUR MOTHER, SOPIIRONIA KEELER 49
and to disrobe themselves of their coats of scarlet and gold and
wear the short army jackets; for the battle-ground was but a
wildwood jungle where they fought that hot July day in the
Trout Brook country. There in the dense forest Lord Howe
fell at the beginning of the fray. The entire ground about
Ticonderoga was of peculiar interest.
We stopped in the small town of Ticonderoga at a nice
quiet hotel, from which we made visits to the surrounding
country. A hard rain had fallen on the night we arrived. In
the morning we hired an express and went out to visit the fort.
When we drove into the enclosure I noticed that the entire
face of the country was covered with a luxuriant growth of
grass, looking so fresh after the late heavy ram. I thought to
myself, "It is little of stained glass or china that I shall find
to-day," but we started to walk out over the old battlefield,
where a fine herd of Holstein cattle were grazing peacefully
among the ruins. I learned from a resident that there were
seven hundred acres in the battlefield. The old parade ground
we saw as beautifully green golf links.
The old well which supplied water to the garrison had been
left to the ravages of time. A tree had found its way among
the stones and almost grown over the mouth of the well. The
large stone oven used for baking bread and meats was but a
great heap of fragments. The underground passage to the lake
gave me an idea of a day long past. All the time we were
walking over this famous ground (which to me, after all, was
our mother's playground) I kept my eyes open to see if I
could find anything such as she had found there when a little
girl, and of which she had told me when I myself was but a
child. I took a little path which the cattle had worn in wandering
from one spot to another until a deep way was eroded
where the water rushed along in times of heavy rain, forming
little cascades. At the end of one of these water-courses I
found a small pool, and here I discovered some bits of stained
glass, which I picked up to carry away as precious keepsakes.
I found one visitor had a kerchief full of mushrooms, and I
thought how true it is that we find that for which we search.
That was a rare day of quiet joy and tender thought.