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

50
ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
Our eyes drank in the surroundings with a doubled interest
and emotion because the young eyes of our precious mother
had looked upon those distant mountains so full of peaceful
grandeur. Near those groves of birch and evergreen and by
the shining waters of the lake, in the sweet and tender years
of childhood, our mother was building up a character which
was to make her the fitting companion of her intellectual
husband and an example of devotion for her four children.
Years afterward she was to talk over with our father the stir-
ring events of the French and Indian War and of those awful
slaughters near her old home where Indian, French, English
and Colonist poured out their life-blood on that ground till
it flowed in rills to touch with its stain the crystal edge of
Lake Champlain. I noted that the long line of trenches
about the fort were still plainly visible and that quite large
trees grew on their sides, showing the passing of years of peace
since those bloody days. How true it is, as father used to
quote: "War bathes its victims in a fiery flood."
While in the small town of Ticonderoga, brother thought
he would like to go out among the Adirondacks and find a wild
place far removed from pomp and vainglory, and so when he
heard of a place called Eagle Lake, ten miles up in the moun-
tains, we went there in a lumbering old stage. We found it
a shady place on the shore of a lake, with an island to add to
its view. We reached the mountain hotel in time for dinner.
The house had just been enlarged and was nice and clean, with
a wide veranda and comfortable chairs. In the early mornings
the landlord would go out on the lake to get fish for breakfast.
There were summer houses under the trees about the hotel,
where a number of Jews from New York City were spending
the warm months. They were a well-behaved party of young
people.
One day Brother Joseph took us out to dine at Crown
Point, but this proved to be not the fort I so desired to see,
but a boarding-house called by that famous name. We did
not see Crown Point at all, though we were but three or four
miles from it and were in no great haste either. It is now but
the ruins of a two-million-dollar fortress and is interesting in