Eighty Years and More | Page 3

enjoyable.
The cellar of our house was filled, in winter, with barrels of apples,

vegetables, salt meats, cider, butter, pounding barrels, washtubs, etc.,
offering admirable nooks for playing hide and seek. Two tallow candles
threw a faint light over the scene on certain occasions. This cellar was
on a level with a large kitchen where we played blind man's buff and
other games when the day's work was done. These two rooms are the
center of many of the merriest memories of my childhood days.
I can recall three colored men, Abraham, Peter, and Jacob, who acted
as menservants in our youth. In turn they would sometimes play on the
banjo for us to dance, taking real enjoyment in our games. They are all
at rest now with "Old Uncle Ned in the place where the good niggers
go." Our nurses, Lockey Danford, Polly Bell, Mary Dunn, and Cornelia
Nickeloy--peace to their ashes--were the only shadows on the gayety of
these winter evenings; for their chief delight was to hurry us off to bed,
that they might receive their beaux or make short calls in the
neighborhood. My memory of them is mingled with no sentiment of
gratitude or affection. In expressing their opinion of us in after years,
they said we were a very troublesome, obstinate, disobedient set of
children. I have no doubt we were in constant rebellion against their
petty tyranny. Abraham, Peter, and Jacob viewed us in a different light,
and I have the most pleasant recollections of their kind services.
In the winter, outside the house, we had the snow with which to build
statues and make forts, and huge piles of wood covered with ice, which
we called the Alps, so difficult were they of ascent and descent. There
we would climb up and down by the hour, if not interrupted, which,
however, was generally the case. It always seemed to me that, in the
height of our enthusiasm, we were invariably summoned to some
disagreeable duty, which would appear to show that thus early I keenly
enjoyed outdoor life. Theodore Tilton has thus described the place
where I was born: "Birthplace is secondary parentage, and transmits
character. Johnstown was more famous half a century ago than since;
for then, though small, it was a marked intellectual center; and now,
though large, it is an unmarked manufacturing town. Before the birth of
Elizabeth Cady it was the vice-ducal seat of Sir William Johnson, the
famous English negotiator with the Indians. During her girlhood it was
an arena for the intellectual wrestlings of Kent, Tompkins, Spencer,

Elisha Williams, and Abraham Van Vechten, who, as lawyers, were
among the chiefest of their time. It is now devoted mainly to the
fabrication of steel springs and buckskin gloves. So, like Wordsworth's
early star, it has faded into the light of common day. But Johnstown
retains one of its ancient splendors--a glory still fresh as at the
foundation of the world. Standing on its hills, one looks off upon a
country of enameled meadow lands, that melt away southward toward
the Mohawk, and northward to the base of those grand mountains
which are 'God's monument over the grave of John Brown.'"
Harold Frederic's novel, "In the Valley," contains many descriptions of
this region that are true to nature, as I remember the Mohawk Valley,
for I first knew it not so many years after the scenes which he lays there.
Before I was old enough to take in the glory of this scenery and its
classic associations, Johnstown was to me a gloomy-looking town. The
middle of the streets was paved with large cobblestones, over which the
farmer's wagons rattled from morning till night, while the sidewalks
were paved with very small cobblestones, over which we carefully
picked our way, so that free and graceful walking was out of the
question. The streets were lined with solemn poplar trees, from which
small yellow worms were continually dangling down. Next to the
Prince of Darkness, I feared these worms. They were harmless, but the
sight of one made me tremble. So many people shared in this feeling
that the poplars were all cut down and elms planted in their stead. The
Johnstown academy and churches were large square buildings, painted
white, surrounded by these same sombre poplars, each edifice having a
doleful bell which seemed to be ever tolling for school, funerals, church,
or prayer meetings. Next to the worms, those clanging bells filled me
with the utmost dread; they seemed like so many warnings of an eternal
future. Visions of the Inferno were strongly impressed on my childish
imagination. It was thought, in those days, that firm faith in hell and the
devil was the greatest help to virtue. It certainly made me very unhappy
whenever my mind dwelt on