milk of the word. My greatest hindrance has been from the lack of
proper Christian teaching. I love the memory of my father, he used
to have me read the bible to him, and while I did not enjoy it then, it
is a blessed memory. The family altar is essential to the welfare of
every home, no other form of discipline is equal to it. The liberty,
chivalry, and life of a nation live or die in proportion as the Altar fires
live or die.

"And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine
heart and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children and shalt
talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by
the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up."

When I was fifteen, the war broke out between the north and the
south. My father saw that Missouri would be the battle ground and he,
with many others, took their families and negroes and went south, taking
what they could in wagons, for there were no railroads then in that section.
There was quite a train with the droves of cattle, mules and horses.
One wagon had six yoke of oxen to it; had to get into it by a ladder,
the kind that was used to freight across the plains. The family
went in the family carriage that my father brought from Kentucky.
I remember the time when this carriage was purchased, with the two
dapple gray horses, and silver mounted harness, and when my mother
would drive out she had a driver in broadcloth, with a high silk hat,
and a boy rode on a seat behind, to open the gates. This was one of
the ways of traveling in Kentucky in those days. My mother was an
aristocrat in her ideas, but my father was not. He liked no display. He
was wise enough to see the sin and folly of it.

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