Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker | Page 8

at that time in my father's esteem a possession of value. I am bound to add that I also felt some self-importance at being intrusted with this secret, for such indeed it was.
Before my grandfather left Wales he had married a distant cousin, Ellin Owen, and on her death, childless, he took to wife, many years later, her younger sister, Gainor [Footnote: Thus early we shed the English prejudice against marriage with a deceased wife's sister.] for these Owens, our kinsmen, had also become Friends, and had followed my grandfather's example in leaving their home in Merionethshire. To this second marriage, which occurred in 1713, were born my aunt, Gainor Wynne, and, two years later, my father, John Wynne. I have no remembrance of either grandparent. Both lie in the ground at Merion Meeting-house, under nameless, unmarked graves, after the manner of Friends. I like it not.
My father, being a stern and silent man, must needs be caught by his very opposite, and, according to this law of our nature, fell in love with Marie Beauvais, the orphan of a French gentleman who had become a Quaker, and was of that part of France called the Midi. Of this marriage I was the only surviving offspring, my sister Ellin dying when I was an infant. I was born in the city of Penn, on January 9, 1753, at 9 P.M.

II
I have but to close my eyes to see the house in which I lived in my youth. It stood in the city of Penn, back from the low bluff of Dock Creek, near to Walnut street. The garden stretched down to the water, and before the door were still left on either side two great hemlock-spruces, which must have been part of the noble woods under which the first settlers found shelter. Behind the house was a separate building, long and low, in which all the cooking was done, and upstairs were the rooms where the slaves dwelt apart.
The great garden stretched westward as far as Third street, and was full of fine fruit-trees, and in the autumn of melons, first brought hither in one of my father's ships. Herbs and simples were not wanting, nor berries, for all good housewives in those days were expected to be able to treat colds and the lesser maladies with simples, as they were called, and to provide abundantly jams and conserves of divers kinds.
There were many flowers too, and my mother loved to make a home here for the wildings she found in the governor's woods. I have heard her regret that the most delicious of all the growths of spring, the ground-sweet, which I think they now call arbutus, would not prosper out of its forest shelter.
The house was of black and red brick, and double; that is, with two windows on each side of a white Doric doorway, having something portly about it. I use the word as Dr. Johnson defines it: a house of port, with a look of sufficiency, and, too, of ready hospitality, which was due, I think, to the upper half of the door being open a good part of the year. I recall also the bull's-eye of thick glass in the upper half-door, and below it a great brass knocker. In the white shutters were cut crescentic openings, which looked at night like half-shut eyes when there were lights within the rooms. In the hall were hung on pegs leathern buckets. They were painted green, and bore, in yellow letters, "Fire" and "J.W."
The day I went to school for the first time is very clear in my memory. I can see myself, a stout little fellow about eight years old, clad in gray homespun, with breeches, low shoes, and a low, flat beaver hat. I can hear my mother say, "Here are two big apples for thy master," it being the custom so to propitiate pedagogues. Often afterward I took eggs in a little basket, or flowers, and others did the like.
"Now run! run!" she cried, "and be a good boy; run, or thou wilt be late." And she clapped her hands as I sped away, now and then looking back over my shoulder.
I remember as well my return home to this solid house, this first day of my going to school. One is apt to associate events with persons, and my mother stood leaning on the half-door as I came running back. She was some little reassured to see me smiling, for, to tell the truth, I had been mightily scared at my new venture.
This sweet and most tender-hearted lady wore, as you may like to know, a gray gown, and a blue chintz apron fastened over the shoulders with wide bands. On her head was a very broad-brimmed white beaver hat, low in