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

OVER THE MOUNTAINS 67
He entered at the open gates,
He passed—and she was gone!
Her place on earth abideth not,
Memorial she hath none;
Darkness and ruin thou mayst find,
But never Babylon!
The terrible finality of the climax filled my childish soul with
wonder, and many were the questions that ran through my
thoughts about Babylon, as "How is so much known about a
city that was lost?"
When I was a little girl our parents decided to build a frame
house, and father selected the spot for its location, which had
been the very first opening in the forest and where the seedling
walnut of his boyhood had grown to be a beautiful tree. There
he built the home where we children grew to manhood and
womanhood. While the new house was in the process of
erection we lived in grandfather's house, and there Brother
Joe was born, August 21, 1840. My first memory of my little
brother disclosed him standing in front of the house crying
very loudly, which so impressed me that the picture he made
remains with me. His little round face was very red and his
black eyes wrinkled shut with weeping. I have no memory of
him as a baby, for I was not two years old when he was born.
As I think of the times and what the long years have revealed
to me, I believe the more that we were happy little
children to have been born into so comfortable a home where
were books and aspirations, and most of all where there was a
deep faith in the Bible and where its precepts were followed
in an active Christian life. Our studious father and our wise
mother were gifts of greatest value. We were glad that in
her youth the latter was able to walk over the mountains from
New York; that she was brave enough and strong enough to do
it; and that there in Ohio she found her husband and children
and home; for never was there a more perfect mother of children,
it has always seemed to us. Our mother never spoke an
angry word to one of her children; her self-control was abso-
lute. When we recount the royalty of our mother, it is but a
deserved tribute to the dear woman who through all our tender