When I was four years old, my father married his second wife, Miss Nancy McIntosh. The next nine years, till my father’s death, June 8th, 1841, were spent in the uneventful routine of a godly family in a country home. My father’s rigid ideas of family discipline were inherited from his Presbyterian ancestors in Scotland, and his own piety was of a distinctly old-school type. He was a ruling elder in the church at Buffalo, Fayetteville Presbytery, in which office he was succeeded by my brother, Evander, and three others of his sons became elders in other churches. No pressure of business was ever allowed to interfere with family worship night and morning. A psalm or hymn from the old village hymnbook always formed part of the service. My father was an early riser, and, in the winter time, family worship was often over before the dawn. Almost every spare moment of his time he spent in reading Scott’s Family Bible, the Philadelphia _Presbyterian_, or one of the few books of devotion which composed the family library. The special treasure of the book-case was the great quarto Illustrated Family Bible, with the Apocrypha and Brown’s Concordance, published by M. Carey, Philadelphia, 1815. It was the only pictorial book in the library, and its pictures were awe-inspiring to us children—especially those in the Book of Revelation:—The Dragon Chained, The Beast with Seven Heads and Ten Horns, and the Vision of the Four Seals. These and the solemn themes of Russell’s _Seven Sermons_—which on rainy days I used to steal away by myself to read—made a profound impression on me. Scottish folk always carry the school with the kirk. Free schools were unknown; but after the crops were “laid by,” we always had a subscription school, in which my father, with his large family, had a leading interest. The teacher “boarded around” with the pupils. Our regular night-task was three questions and answers in the Shorter Catechism—no small task for boys of ten or twelve years. My memory of the Catechism once stood me in good stead in after-life. When examined for licensure by the Orange Presbytery, I was asked, “What is man’s state by nature?” In reply I gave the answers to the nineteenth and twentieth questions in the Catechism. A perceptible smile passed over the faces of many of the presbyters, and Father Lynch said, “He is right on the Catechism. He will pass.” In those days to be “right on the Catechism” would atone for many failures in Hodge or Turretin. The church was at the village of Buffalo, four miles from our home, but no one of the family was expected to be absent from the family pew on “the Sabbath.” Carriages were a later luxury in that region. Our two horses carried father and mother, with the youngest of the little folks mounted behind, till he should be able to walk with the rest.