Thus as I swung leg over Satan that morning I resolved to handle him as
I had seen my father do, and I felt strong enough for that. I
remembered, in the proud way a boy will have, the time when my father
and I, riding through the muddy streets of Leesburg town together, saw a
farmer's wagon stuck midway of a crossing. "Come, Jack," my father
called me, "we must send Bill Yarnley home to his family." Then we two
dismounted, and stooping in the mud got our two shoulders under the axle
of the wagon, before we were done with it, our blood getting up at the
laughter of the townsfolk. When we heaved together, out came Bill
Yarnley's wagon from the mud, and the laughter ended. It was like
him--he would not stop when once he started. Why, it was so he married
my mother, that very sweet Quakeress from the foot of old Catoctin. He
told me she said him no many times, not liking his wild ways, so
contrary to the manner of the Society of Friends; and she only
consented after binding him to go with her once each week to the little
stone church at Wallingford village, near our farm, provided he should
be at home and able to attend. My mother I think during her life had not
missed a half dozen meetings at the little stone church. Twice a week,
and once each Sunday, and once each month, and four times each year, and
also annually, the Society of Friends met there at Wallingford, and have
done so for over one hundred and thirty-five years. Thither went my
mother, quiet, brown-haired, gentle, as good a soul as ever lived, and
with her my father, tall, strong as a tree, keeping his promise until at
length by sheer force of this kept promise, he himself became half
Quaker and all gentle, since he saw what it meant to her.

As I have paused in my horsemanship to speak thus of my father, I ought
also to speak of my mother. It was she who in those troublous times just
before the Civil War was the first to raise the voice in the Quaker
Meeting which said that the Friends ought to free their slaves, law or