The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I

the plastic stage, and especially in respect to the moral elements on which the stability and purpose of a man's life depend, a man is indebted to his m

nduring, not that I regret the effect of my father's influence, but because I think my mother had some qualities from which my best are derived, and which I should like to see completely carried out in the life of a man, while I recognize in a certain vagarious tendency in my father the probable hereditary basis of the incons

rothers. He inherited, like all of us, his father's mechanical tendency and inventiveness, and added to it a persistency and constancy of purpose peculiarly hers, which none of the other children inherited to the same extent; and h

iations of the war of American independence. He, in fact, as I have heard him say, was born under the rule of the King of England, and his father considered the Revolution so little justified that to

m of dissent was found, and one of the consequences was that the colony became a sort of field for Christian dialectics, where the most extreme doctrines on all points of Christian belief were discussed without other or more serious results of the odium theologicum than the building of many meeting-houses and the multiplication of sects. Among these sects was one which played an important part in the local theology of that day and for many years aft

and the sect flourished greatly in it, while the social isolation consequent on the practice of contracting marriages only in their church membership-made imperative if family dissensions were to be avoided on a question of primary importance to that co

ity between the Christian church and the institutions imposed in Paradise, and therefore made them peculiarly the people of God. This amiable fanaticism, fervent without being uncharitable, interfered in no wise with the widest exercise of Christian sympathy with other sects, the observance of the Seventh-Day Sabbath not being held as an essential to godliness or to Christian fellowship, the non-observance being possibly only due to ignorance, so that the relations of the historic First Seventh-Day Baptist Church at Newport with the churches observing the "Lord's-Day Sabbath" were always most kindly. The meeting-house occupied by the Sabbatarians on the seventh day was occupied by one of the Sunday-observing sects on the first, and the preachers of one often offici

effect, the banishment of all forms of sectarian persecution, so that the maxim of the Broad Church-"Freedom in

my ancestors must have developed a singularly fine and cutting-edge temper in its adherents, and the succession of generations of men and women who had graduated in

a common petition for the restoration of Israel; and the Sabbatarian eye of prophecy looked forward to the day when, in the peace of the millennium, the Jews in Jerusalem should be the witnesses of the faith of the Seventh-Day Baptist Church in the keep

he girls stole past the sentry in the British fort, or battery, for I could never learn exactly what was the nature of these two outposts of authority and rebellion, and, running the flag down, tore it into thirteen stripes and ran it up again and escaped unseen. This insult brought the whole force about their ears, and the commandant came, with his staff, to question the household if any clue to it could be found. Fortunately, when the girls had come back from their expedition and went giggling in their glee to their mother, she suspected some dangerous venture and peremptorily ordered them to hold their tongues and not come to her with any of their mischief. She was thus able to reply to the officer charged with the inquisition that she knew nothing of the matter, and such was the rigid obligation of the truth in that Puritan community that even

home I have to deal with, and in this my mother grew up. She was the eldest of a family of five, left motherless when she was sixteen. Her father was the director of the smallpox hospital in Newport, then an institution of grave importance to the community, as the practice of obligatory inoculation prevailed, and all the young people of the colony had to go up in classes to the hospital and pass the ordeal. Her mother's death left her the matron of the hospital and caretaker of her sister and brothers, and the stories of her life at that time, which she told me now and then, showed that,

eback from pasture, when necessary for the daily work, which was not insignificant, for Newport was really the seaport of that section of the State, and as it was on an island of importance, the intercourse with the mainland called for sea and land service. The boys were all fishermen, for a large part of the subsistence of the family came from the fishing-grounds outside the harbor, and, as the oldest brot

ich he alternated, as was generally the habit of the young men of the New England coast, with fishing on the banks of Newfoundland in the cod-fishing season. Having, in addition, a share of the Yankee inventiveness, he became interested in the perfecting of a fulling-machine, to introduce which into what was then the West, he made a temporary residence in New York State, at the old Dutch town of Schenectady, at that time the entrep?t of commerce between the Eastern cities and New York, and the Northwest. Utica was then a frontier settlement, Buffalo an outpost in the wilderness, and, the country having barely recovered from the war of 1812-

signing of the Declaration, so that his n

and the seizure of all my father's little property, and, what was worse, the certainty of imprisonment for debt in the case of his returning home. Owing to the judgments hanging over him, which a succession of misfortunes prevented him from ever satisfying, it was late in my own remem

, the light of it still illumined her, and she never questioned that He who had led them into the wilderness would maintain them in it. She seemed to have but one care in her life while I knew her-to know and do her duty. She found a special providence in every instance of relief from their pressing wants, and I recall the religious serenity with which she told me of the greatest strait of the hardest winter of that period, when resources seemed to have been exhausted to the last crumb, and they unexpectedly received from one of her half brothers, who had gone farther west, and lived in what was practically the wilderness, a barrel of salted pigeons' breasts. There had been one of those almost fabulous flights of the now nearly extinct pass

th, an openness of her mind upward, as if she felt that the eternal eye was on her and reading her thoughts. The sense of her responsibility was so serious that I think that only the absorbing activity of her daily life, and the way in which every moment was occupied with positive duties, prevented her from falling into religious insanity. Her life was a constant prayer, a wrestling with God for the salvation of her children. No image of her remains in my mind so clear as that in which I see her sitting by the fireside in the dim light of our single home-made candle, her knitting-needles flying and her lips moving in prayer, while the tears st

abit of thought and conduct so formed is invincible, and in all the subsequent modifications of the primitive and Hebraic conception of the spiritual life which she inoculated me with, an unconscious aspiration in prayer and an absolute and organic trust in the protectio

, would demand of her an account of every neglect of duty, every idle word and thought, and especially of the manner in which she had taught her children to obey his commandments. She seemed to scan her life continually to find some sin in the past, for which she had not specifically repented, and, a

far too important to my father's little workshop to be spared for the necessary schooling. He struggled through night schools, and in the intervals of day leisure, to qualify himself to enter the college in our city. Before doing so he fell under the notice of old Dr. Nott, president of the college, who was, beside being a teacher of wonderful ability, a clever inventor, and, perceiving my brother's mechanical capacity, persuaded him to abandon the plan of entering the m

nd the elements, and who wanted them in the workshop. But it had become to my mother a conception of her duty, that, as the relations between my eldest brother and the president of the college led to an offer of what was practically a free education, the younger boys should be permitted to profit by the offer, and when duty entered her head there was no force capable of driving it out. Charles, the first of us to graduate, became the c

ho came as a "help" at the time of my birth, and subsequently married my second brother. My mother was also the family doctor, for, except in very grave cases, we never had any other physician. She pulled our teeth and prescribed all our medicines. I was well grown before I wore a suit which was not of her cutting and

ugh her doubts, lest he should have lived long enough to sin, and had not repented, for, though her dreary creed taught that the rigors of eternal damnation rested on every one who had not repented of each individual sin, and that adult baptism was the only assurance of redemption, it did not teach, nor did she believe, that the innocence of childhood required the certificate of the church. All the rest of her children had professed religion and received baptism according to the rites of the Baptist Church, but little William left in the mother's heart the sting of uncertainty. Had he lived long enough to transgress the Law and not repented? was to her an ever-present question of terrible import. Years rolled by without weakening this torture of apprehension that this little lamb of all her flock might be expiating the sin of Adam in the flames of Eternity, a perpetual babyhood of woe. The depth of the misery this haunting fear inflicted o

eathbed she was called the next day, a deathbed of literal starvation. She recognized the woman, who had come to our house with a story of a family of starving children, but as my mother's experienced eye assured her she had never been a mother, she refused her as a deceiver what the poor always got. "Why did you tell me you had children," mother asked her, "when you came to me yesterd

same rigorous level, dispassionate as the law. If I transgressed the commands of herself or of my father the punishment was inevitable, never in wrath, generally on the day after the offense, but inexorable; she never meant to spoil the child by sparing the rod, but flogged with tears in her eyes and an aching heart, often giving the punishment herself, to prevent my father from giving it, as he always flogged mercilessly and in anger, though if I

received the flogging instead of the thanks I anticipated for the wages I was bringing her, the haste with which my mother administered it lest my father should anticipate her and beat me after his fashion, are as vivid in my recollection as if it had taken place last year. This was a sample of the family discipline. I was forbidden to walk with other boys when I drove the cow to pasture; forbidden to bathe in the mill-pond near by except at stated times, to play with certain children, to amuse myself on the Sabbath, and other similar doings, all to my childish apprehension harmless in themselves, and the punishment never failed to follow the discovery of the transgression. Naturally I learned to lie, a thing contrary to my inclination and nature, and a torture to my conscience, but I had not the courage to meet the flo