The king can but love her, and I do the same—
I’ll crown her my jewel and be her true swain.
]
Trouble was in store for the young carpenter and his bride. He contracted to build a house for a neighbor, finding all the lumber himself, and going into the woods with his men to hew out the timbers. The work done, the pay for it was not forthcoming, and his own little home, with a farm of eighty-five acres, nearly paid for, was swallowed up. So the family moved to the Genesee Country to seek a better fortune. Here the children—for there were children now—suffered from fever and ague; and humbling his pride, Theophilus Stickney accepted his father-in-law’s invitation to return to the Black River Country and live on a piece of the Cook farm. Here it was, in the town of Rodman, Jefferson County, that Chloe Angeline Stickney, the carpenter’s sixth child, was born. There were three older sisters, and two little brothers had died in infancy.
The soil of Rodman is to this day very productive. In those early days grain grew abundantly, there were no railroads to ship it away, and distilleries were set up everywhere. The best of good whisky was as free as water; and Theophilus Stickney became a drunkard. It is the sin of many a fine nature, but like other sins it is visited upon the third and fourth generations. Especially was it visited upon little Angeline, a child of a very fine and sensitive organization. For sixty-two years, in a weakened nervous system, did she pay the penalty of her father’s intemperance. To her that father was but a name. Before she was three years old he had left home to become a wanderer. And in February, 1842, he died among strangers in a hospital at Rochester.
CHAPTER II.
––––––
THE FATHERLESS CHILD.
All the saints had not appeared on earth till the birth of Chloe Angeline Stickney on All Saints’ Day, 1830. At least, if she is not one of the All Saints she is one of the Hall Saints. No doubt the associations connected with her birthday helped the growing girl toward a realization of her ideals; for in after life, in the sweet confidence of motherhood, she used to tell her sons that her birthday fell on All Saints’ Day.
But it appears that all the saints were not present at the baby’s birth. Else the child’s father might have been rescued from the demon of strong drink—the child herself might have been blessed with a strong body as a fit abode for her spirit—and she might have been protected from the silly women who named her!
Chloe Angeline! Think of it! The name Angeline alone might do. Chloe might do; for, altho’ unheard of in the Cook and Stickney families, it belonged to the good woman who nursed the child’s mother. But Chloe Angeline!—the second name borrowed from a cheap novel current in those days! What’s in a name? In this case this much: Proof that the father’s standing in his own family was lost. His eldest daughter was named Charlotte, the third one Mary—the same sensible names as were borne by two of his sisters in New Hampshire. Apparently the defenceless babe was a fatherless child from the day of birth.