August 31.
"Mammi," said I, waking from a deep reverie as I sat beside our bright wood-fire (for we have had two days of dashing rain, and fires have not been at all disagreeable), "did grandpapa ever return to New Hampshire after he left it in 1821?"
"No, my dear," was the reply; "he never returned, nor did he manifest any desire to see his former home and his old friends again. I suppose that all of his pleasant recollections of New Hampshire were superseded by the thought that it was the scene of his bankruptcy, and his proud spirit shrunk from meeting those who might remember that he had left Amherst a fugitive. He was deeply attached to his forest home, and I do not think he ever had an hour of discomfort after he came there. Father always expressed the wish that he might be buried upon his farm. His old age was very serene and happy; he lived to see his 'hole in the forest' become an extensive farm, and the vast wilderness that had surrounded him disappear, while the little tavern and cluster of log-houses across the State line from us grew to be the village of Clymer.
"Father died in 1867, at the age of eighty-seven.
"As for mother, she had the happiness before her death of seeing her fondly loved relatives once more. In the autumn of 1843, mother and I went to New Hampshire to visit the old home and friends. Father was urged to accompany us, but he chose to cling to his Western home. For the third time I now travelled in a canal-boat, but this time it was a packet, and not one of the slow 'line-boats' that I described to you in speaking of our journey from Vermont to Pennsylvania.
"Brother Horace accompanied us from New York to New Hampshire, where we spent several weeks visiting mother's old friends and relatives. The meeting between mother and her sister, Aunt Margaret Dickey, was especially tender, for they had been separated many years, and did not expect to meet again.
"Aunt Margaret is still living, although now in her ninetieth year. I remember hearing that she read your uncle's 'Recollections,' as they appeared in the Ledger, with the liveliest interest. She was at that time eighty-four years old.
"In her youth Aunt Margaret was a decided beauty, with luxuriant hair of the real golden shade, neither flaxen, ash-color, nor red. She was naturally refined and amiable.
"From New Hampshire we went to Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where mother's half-sister, Sally, resided. Aunt Sally was doubly my aunt, having married father's brother, Dustin Greeley. She was a slender, handsome woman, with blue eyes and light hair, and possessed mother's happy temperament, which all the trials of her hard life had not been able to change.
"That year I celebrated three Thanksgivings within as many weeks."