There were no railroads then. She went on the canal “packet.” This scene was very real to me. I could see her starting, loth to leave her little family, yet eager to go; timid at the thought of the enterprise, but impatient at the slow-moving boat. I’m sure she often walked on the towpath to relieve excitement and suspense. I wonder how long it took that snail boat to make the trip. Parts of the journey were made by stagecoach. On reaching her old home she found her sisters, but her father had moved to Warren County. More than that, he had had one or two strokes of apoplexy and could no longer converse; he would, as the sisters said, “say one word when he meant another.” Her money was not sufficient to meet the additional expenses; the extra time it would take was a serious drawback to the anxious mother; then there was her father’s inability to talk with her; so, torn between conflicting interests, hampered, anxious, and sore beset, she abandoned the quest, renounced her long-cherished hope of reunion with her father, and turned her face toward home and family, drawn by a half-defined fear lest they get scattered, too. During Grandma’s last years her sister Thankful came and lived with her--two feeble old women, united in infancy, separated throughout their long lives, reunited just before the end! We children called her Aunt Unthankful: her presence added much to Grandma’s burdens, but no murmur passed the patient lips; nor would she suffer criticism of the poor soul who had found refuge in her home and heart. As a girl I was keenly alive to the pathos of my great-grandfather’s life, and to the deferred, then all-but-accomplished hope in Grandma’s. My own mother’s cherished hope of one day taking Grandma to her childhood home was also doomed to unfulfilment; and with a curious prescience I used to ask, “Will the dearest hope that sleeps against my own heart meet a like rebuff?” Had the tired, saddened woman found her father at the last, I wonder if his failing mind could have grasped the truth. Perhaps he would have turned away in bitter disappointment when they had tried to make him understand; unable to articulate, but thinking, “That is not my baby Eunice that John Gear stole from me.” Perhaps he died hoping, believing, that his little Eunice would still come back.