control. But my father was a rover from his youth, and Saturday being
his only leisure day he used to take me with him on long walks in the
woods and fields, according to the season; and the weather and the
length of the day were his only limitations. In the house she ruled,
but out of it he made his own conscience, and so it happened that the
only pleasures that I owe him, except the bringing me a few books when
he came back from his business trips to New York to sell his machines,
were those long walks in the face of nature. He was, in his family,
apparently a cold, hard man, but out of it, kindly and benevolent,
melting always to distress which came in his way; with a passionate
love of animals and of nature. He was a poor business man, for he
could never press for the payment of debts due to him, but his honesty
was so rigid that it became a proverb in our town that a man should be
"as honest as old Joe Stillman," and that good name was all he gave or
left his children.

My father died in one of my occasional absences in Europe, and when I
saw my old mother in the black she never again laid off, she told me,
tranquilly and with a firm voice, but with the tears running down her
cheeks, how he died, and said, "He was so handsome that I wanted to
keep him another day." The warmth of expression struck me strangely,
for in all my home experience I had never heard before a word
which could be taken as a token of conjugal tenderness, but when I
reflected, I could see that it was and always had been the same with
the children. Of the nine children she bore, five died before she did,
including her second and, during my life, her only daughter, but in
all the bereavements she retained her calm, self-contained manner,
weeping silently, and tranquilly going about the house, comforting
those who shared the bereavement, uncomplaining, reconciled in
advance; she had consigned her beloved to the God who gave them to