Captain Macklin | Page 2

is a jealous mistress."
The one who, in my earliest childhood, arranged that I should follow
the profession of arms, was my mother's father, and my only surviving
grandparent. He was no less a personage than Major-General John M.
Hamilton. I am not a writer; my sword, I fear and hope, will always be
easier in my hand than my pen, but I wish for a brief moment I could
hold it with such skill, that I might tell of my grandfather properly and
gratefully, and describe him as the gentle and brave man he was. I

know he was gentle, for though I never had a woman to care for me as
a mother cares for a son, I never missed that care; and I know how
brave he was, for that is part of the history of my country. During many
years he was my only parent or friend or companion; he taught me my
lessons by day and my prayers by night, and, when I passed through all
the absurd ailments to which a child is heir, he sat beside my cot and
lulled me to sleep, or told me stories of the war. There was a childlike
and simple quality in his own nature, which made me reach out to him
and confide in him as I would have done to one of my own age. Later, I
scoffed at this virtue in him as something old-fashioned and credulous.
That was when I had reached the age when I was older, I hope, than I
shall ever be again. There is no such certainty of knowledge on all
subjects as one holds at eighteen and at eighty, and at eighteen I found
his care and solicitude irritating and irksome. With the intolerance of
youth, I could not see the love that was back of his anxiety, and which
should have softened it for me with a halo and made me considerate
and grateful. Now I see it--I see it now that it is too late. But surely he
understood, he knew how I looked up to him, how I loved him, and
how I tried to copy him, and, because I could not, consoled myself
inwardly by thinking that the reason I had failed was because his way
was the wrong one, and that my way was the better. If he did not
understand then, he understands now; I cannot bear to think he does not
understand and forgive me.
Those were the best days of my life, the days I spent with him as a
child in his own home on the Hudson. It stands at Dobbs Ferry, set in a
grove of pines, with a garden about it, and a box hedge that shuts it
from the road. The room I best remember is the one that overlooks the
Hudson and the Palisades. From its windows you can watch the great
vessels passing up and down the river, and the excursion steamers
flying many flags, and tiny pleasure-boats and great barges. There is an
open fireplace in this room, and in a corner formed by the book- case,
and next to the wood-box, was my favorite seat. My grandfather's place
was in a great leather chair beside the centre-table, and I used to sit
cross-legged on a cushion at his feet, with my back against his knees
and my face to the open hearth. I can still see the pages of "Charles
O'Malley" and "Midshipman Easy," as I read them by the lifting light
of that wood fire, and I can hear the wind roaring down the chimney

and among the trees outside, and the steamers signalling to each other
as they pushed through the ice and fog to the great city that lay below
us. I can feel the fire burning my face, and the cold shivers that ran
down my back, as my grandfather told me of the Indians who had once
hunted in the very woods back of our house, and of those he had fought
with on the plains. With the imagination of a child, I could hear,
mingled with the shrieks of the wind as it dashed the branches against
the roof, their hideous war-cries as they rushed to some night attack, or
the howling of the wolves in the snow. When I think of myself as I was
then I am very fond of that little boy who sat shivering with excitement,
and staring with open eyes at the pictures he saw in the firelight, a little
boy who had made no enemies, no failures, who had harmed no one,
and who knew nothing of the world outside the walls that sheltered him,
save the brave old soldier who was his law and his example, his friend
in trouble, and