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I, the third child born to my parents, was but a few months old when my little brother was taken by my father to Roxbury and left there with his grandmother.

This singular and painful episode in our family history illustrates more clearly than could any mere description, the mode of thought and action prevalent at that date respecting the training and education of children.

Our parents lived in an obscure country village, a mere hamlet, destitute of school and social privileges. The few families who, with them, made up the population of the hamlet were their inferiors in breeding and education; their children were a lawless, ill-mannered set, and the only school near them was what was known as “an old field school” upon the outskirts of a plantation three miles away. Little Edwin, a bright, intelligent laddie, was taught to read and write by his mother before he was five. He loved books; but he was restless for the lack of playfellows of his own age. His father was bent upon giving him all the learning that could be crammed into one small head, and cast about for opportunities of carrying out the design. The grandmother begged to have one of the children for a long visit; schooling of an advanced type was to be had within a stone’s-throw of her door, and the boy, if intrusted to her, would have a mother’s care. My father urged the measure upon his weaker-willed wife. She opposed it less and less strenuously until the boy came in from the street one day with an oath in his mouth he had learned from one of the Dennisville boys.

“That night, upon my knees, and with a breaking heart, I consented to let him go North,” the mother told me, falteringly, when I was a woman grown.

The father hurried him off within the week—I imagine lest she might change her mind—and remained in Roxbury three weeks with him to accustom him to his new abode. His letters written during this absence are cheerful—I am disposed to say, “obstinately optimistic.” I detect, too, a touch of diplomacy in the remarks dropped here and there, as to his mortification at finding Edwin so “backward in his education by comparison with other children of his age,” and the bright prospects opening for his future in the “excellent school of which everybody speaks highly.”

The day before his father left him, Edwin accompanied him to Boston, and books were bought for his sister, with a pretty gift for his mother. He had grown quite fond of his grandmother, so the father reported when he arrived at home, and the kind-hearted “Deacon was as good as another boy.”

Letters came with gratifying regularity—fortnightly—from Roxbury. The boy was going to school and making amends for his “backwardness” by diligence and proficiency. I have laid away in our family Bible quaintly worded “Rewards of Merit”—printed forms upon paper which crackles under the fingers that unfold it—testifying to perfect recitations and good behavior. The boy’s name and the testimonials are filled in by his woman teacher in legible, ladylike script. The fortnightly epistles told of the child’s health and “nice” behavior. I fancy that more stress was laid upon the last item by his grandmother than upon the first. My father expressed himself as satisfied with the result of the experiment. The mother mourned secretly for the merry voice and bonny face of her darling. At the end of three months the longing leaped the bounds of wifely submission, and she won from her husband the admission that home was not home without his boy. They would go in company to Roxbury next summer and bring him back with them. If he were to be sent from home to school, they would commit him to the Olney or Richmond kinspeople. Roxbury was a cruel distance from central Virginia.

A month later two letters were brought to my father’s counting-room with the Richmond mail. One told of Edwin’s dangerous illness, the second of his death and burial. His malady—brain-fever—was set down by the grandmother to “the visitation of God.” In view of his rapid progress in learning, and the strict discipline of the household in which he studied the lessons to be recited on the morrow, and without a blunder, we may hold a different opinion, and one that exonerates the Deity of direct interference in the work.

Be this as it may, the precious five-year-old had died so far from his mother’s arms that, had she set out immediately upon receipt of the news of his illness, a month would have elapsed between the departure of the letter from Roxbury and her arrival there, if she had travelled day and night. His earthly education was finished.

The stricken father, staring at the brace of fatal letters—couched, you may be sure, in duly pietistic phrase and interlarded with Scripture texts—had the terrible task of breaking the news to the mother whose happy dream and talk were all of “when we go North for our boy.”

He carried the letters home. His wife was not in “the chamber,” where a colored nurse—another family servant—was in charge of the two little girls. Hearing her footsteps approaching presently, the strong man’s heart failed him suddenly. He retreated behind the open door, actually afraid to face the gentle woman to whom his will was law.

Suspecting a practical joke, my light-hearted mother pulled back the door, the knob of which he had clutched in his desperate misery, saw his face and the letters in his hand, and fell in a dead faint at his feet.

In the summer of 1863 I visited the little grave with my husband. Civil War raged like a sea of blood between North and South. The parents had not seen Edwin’s last resting-place in several years. I knew the way to the secluded corner of the old Dorchester Cemetery where, beside the kind old step-grandfather who loved the boy while living, lies the first-born of our Virginia home. The stone is inscribed with his name and the names of his parents, the dates of his birth and death, and below these:

“Our trust is in the Lord.”

None of our friends in Roxbury and Dorchester knew so much as the child’s name. The headstone leaned one way, the footstone another, and a desolate hollow, telling of total neglect, lay between. Yet right above the heart of the forgotten boy was a tumbler of white flowers, still fresh. By whom left we never knew, although we made many inquiries. Dr. Terhune had the grave remounded and turfed, the stones cleaned and set upright, and at the second visit that assured us this was done, we covered the grave with flowers.

In my next “flag-of-truce” letter, I wrote to let his mother know what we had seen and done, and of the bunch of white flowers left by the nameless friend.

Our grandmother treasured and sent home to his mother, after a while, the child’s clothing and every toy and book that had been his, even a hard cracker bearing the imprint of the tiny teeth he was too weak to set firmly in the biscuit.

The preservation of the odd relic was the only touch of poetry I ever discerned in the granite nature of my father’s mother.

With him the sorrow for his boy lasted with his life. Thirty years afterward I heard Edwin’s name from his lips for the first time.

“No other child has ever been to me what he was!” he said. “And the pain is as keen now as it was then.”

Then he arose and began pacing the room, as was his habit when strongly moved, hands behind his back, head depressed, and lips closely folded.

He loved the child so passing well that he could sacrifice his own joy in his companionship to what he believed to be the child’s better good.

After this bereavement the Dennisville life became insupportably sad. I think it was more in consequence of this than for pecuniary profit that my father, the next year, removed his family to Lunenburg.

My mother could never speak of her residence in Amelia County without a pale shudder. Yet that it was not wasted time, I have evidences from other sources.

Part of a letter written to her at Olney in the early spring succeeding the removal to Dennisville shows with what cheerful courage my father set about church and neighborhood work. Next to his home and the loved ones gathered there, the church of which he was a loyal son had his best energies and warmest thought.

“You cannot imagine how solitary I am. I could not have thought that the absence of my dear wife and child would create so great a vacuum in my life. I do not wish to hasten your return from your friends, but you may rest assured that I shall be heartily glad when you come home. I got home on Sunday morning, and found Mr. White here in quiet possession of the house. His wife did not come with him on account of the bad roads.

“He gave us for a text John xv: 25:—‘They hated me without a cause.’

“The congregation was nearly, if not quite, as large as when he preached the first time, and very attentive. Many express a wish to hear him again. He gave notice that he would on the third Sunday in March preach, and also mentioned that an effort would be made to establish a Sabbath-school and Bible-class. It is really encouraging to see how readily many of the people fall into the measure, without going from home, too. Fathers have given their names to me, wishing to send their children, and several others I have heard of who appear anxious to embrace the opportunity. Doctor Shore and Mr. White dined with me yesterday, and quite unexpectedly I had the pleasure of Doctor Shore, Mr. Bland, and Mr. Lancaster at dinner with me to-day. So you see that I now get the society of all the good folks while you are away. But do not be jealous, for Doctor S. had not heard of your absence, and apologized for Mrs. Shore and Mrs. Hardy not calling on you, saying that he considered it as his and their duty so to do, and they would not be so remiss for the future. You cannot imagine what a rain we have had for the last twelve hours, accompanied with thunder and lightning. All the creeks about us are impassable, so that we live, I may say, in a corner with but one way to get out without swimming, and that is to go to Prince Edward. We can get there when we can go nowhere else. I have got a hen-house full of eggs, and have been working right hard to-day to make the hens and an old Muscovy set on them, but they are obstinate things, and will have their own way, so I have given it up as a bad job. Don’t forget to ask Mr. Carus for some of the big pumpkin seed. By-the-by, Mrs. Branch had found out before I returned who I was, where I lived, what I did, and, in fact, knew almost as much about me as I did myself. These wagoners are great telltales! To-morrow I pen a pig for you. The calves and cows are in good order. I will try to have some fresh butter for you. Bose is in excellent health, and the rats are as plentiful as ever. You must kiss our little one for me, and take thousands for yourself. I again repeat that time hangs heavy on my hands when you are away, but I would not be so selfish as to debar you the pleasure of a few days’ society with those who are dear to us both.”

The “Mr. White” mentioned in this letter became an eminent clergyman as Rev. William Spotswood White, D.D. The services described here were held in a private house in Dennisville, for the nearest place of regular worship was some miles away in Nottoway County. In this church my father was ordained an elder. He was, also, superintendent of the Sunday-school established through his personal influence. The pupils and teachers were collected from the surrounding plantations, and the new-comer to the sleepy neighborhood made life-long friends with the “best people” of the region.

Quite unconsciously, he gives us, in this résumé of every-day happenings, glimpses into a life at once primitive and refined. The roads are all afloat, but three men draw rein at his door on one day, and dine with him while his wife is away—“an unexpected pleasure.” He busies himself with chickens, eggs, and pigs, cows and calves, reports the health of the house-dog, the promise of Sabbath-school and church, and runs the only store in that part of the county successfully. And this was the first experience of country life for the city-bred man and merchant!

The Lunenburg home was not even a “ville.” A house that had been a rural inn, and, across the road, a hundred yards down its irregular length, “the store,” formed, with the usual outbuildings, the small settlement three days distant from Richmond. My father and mother boarded for a few months with Captain and Mrs. Bragg, who lived in the whilom “House of Entertainment” on the roadside.

I was but two years old when there occurred a calamity, the particulars of which I have heard so often that I seem to recollect them for myself:

One cold winter day my mother left her little daughters with their toys at the end of the large bedroom most remote from a roaring wood-fire; told them not to go nearer to it, and took her work down to Mrs. Bragg’s chamber. The gentle hostess had a baby but a week old, and her boarder’s call was one of neighborly kindness. On the stairs she met Lucy Bragg, a child about my sister’s age—five—a pretty, merry baby, and our only playfellow. My mother’s discipline was never harsh. It was ever effectual, for we seldom disobeyed her. She stopped Lucy on the stairs to warn her not to play near the fire.

We played happily together for an hour or two, before Lucy complained of being cold and went up to the fireplace; stood there for a moment, her back to the fire and hands behind her, prattling with the children at the other end of the room. Suddenly she screamed and darted past us, her clothing on fire.

My mother heard the shrieks from the distant “chamber” on the ground floor, and, without arousing the sleeping patient, slipped noiselessly from the room and ran with all her might toward the stairs. Half-way up she met a child wrapped in flames, which she was beating with her poor little hands while she shrieked for help. My mother flashed by her, escaping harm on the narrow stairway as by a miracle. One glance into her own room showed her that her girls were safe; she tore a blanket from the bed and was back so quickly that she overtook the burning figure on the lowermost stair, and wrapped her in the blanket. Captain Bragg appeared below at the same instant, wound the cover about the frantic, struggling creature, and extinguished the fire.

Little Lucy died that night. Her mother and the baby followed her to the grave in a week.

The tragedy broke up the Bragg household, and we found a temporary home in the family of Mr. Andrew McQuie (pronounced “McWay”), two miles from the store. The McQuies were prosperous planters, and the intimacy begun that winter continued as long as the older members of the clan lived. We girls learned to call her “Grandma,” and never remitted the title and the affection that prompted it.

Our apartments were in the “Office,” a detached brick building in the corner of the house-yard—a common appendage to most plantation-homesteads. At some period of the family history a father or son of the house had practised law or medicine, and used the “office” in that capacity. It never lost the name.

And here, on a windy wintry evening, I awoke to the consciousness of my Individuality.

I do not know how better to express the earliest memory I have of being—and thinking. It was a living demonstration of the great truth shallow thinkers never comprehend—“Cogito, ergo sum.”

I had fallen asleep, tired with play, and lulled into drowsiness by the falling rain outside. I lay among the pillows of the trundle-bed at the back of the room, and, awakening with a cry of fright at finding myself, as I thought, alone, was answered by my mother’s voice.

She sat by the fire in a low rocking-chair, and, guided by her reassuring tone, I tumbled out of bed and ran toward her. In the area lighted by the burning logs, I saw her, as in another sphere. To this hour I recall the impression that she was thinking of something besides myself. Baby as I was, I felt vaguely that she was not “all there,” even when she took me upon her lap. When she said, kindly and in her own sweet way, “Did my little girl think her mother had left her alone in the dark?” she did not withdraw her eyes from the ruddy fire.

Something warned me not to speak again. I leaned my head against her shoulder, and we studied the fire together. Did the intensity of her musing stir my dormant soul into life? I cannot say. Only that I date my conscious personal existence from that mystic hour. The picture is before me to-night, as I hear my daughter singing her boy to sleep in the next room, and the lake-wind rattles the vines about my window. The sough of the heated air over the brands and embers; the slow motion of the rocker as we swayed to and fro; my mother’s thoughtful silence, and my small self, awed into speechlessness by the new thing that had come to me; my pulpy brain interfused with the knowledge that I was a thinking entity, and unable to grapple with the revelation—all this is as distinct as things of yesternight.

I have heard but one experience that resembled this supreme moment of my infancy. My best-beloved tutor related to me when I was twelve years old that he “recollected when he began to think.” The sensation, he said, was as if he were talking to himself and could not stop. I had that day heard the epigrammatic “Cogito, ergo sum,” and I told of my awakening from a mere animal to spiritual and intellectual life.

I do not comprehend the mystery better now than on that never-to-be-forgotten evening. I but know that the miracle was!