Among all the noble men of those heroic times, I, for my part, like to think of old John Pierpont, the minister poet, who broke bread at my mother’s table. Whether this predilection is due to prenatal causes, some Oliver Wendell Holmes may decide. Certain it is that I was born in September, 1868, and in the preceding April my mother wrote:
O dear anemone, and violet fair,
Beloved hepatica, arbutus sweet!
Two years ago I twined your graces rare,
And laid the garland at the poet’s feet.
The grand old poet on whose brow the snow
Of eighty winters lay in purest white,
But in whose heart was held the added glow
Of eighty summers full of warmth and light.
Like some fair tree within the tropic clime