At the foot of the hill, extending to the Vermillion Bayou, were the pasture grounds, where grazed the cattle, and where the bleating sheep followed, step by step, the stately ram with tinkling bell suspended to his neck. How clearly is that scenery pictured in my mind with its lights and shadows! Were I a painter I could even now portray with striking reality the minutest shadings and beauties of that landscape. How strange that I should recall so vividly those things, while scenes that I have admired in my maturer years have been obliterated from my memory! Ah! the child's mind, like soft wax, is easily molded to sensations and impressions that never fade, while man's mind, blunted by the keenness of life's deceptions, can no longer receive and retain the imprints of those impressions and sensations. If this be true, does not a kind Providence suggest to us, in this wise, the wisdom of molding the child's mind and intelligence with the fostering care of parental solicitude, that he may become an upright man, a good citizen and a reproachless husband and father. My father was an Acadian, son of an Acadian, and proud of his ancestry. The term Acadian was, in those days, synonymous with honesty, hospitality and generosity. By his indomitable energy, my father had acquired a handsome fortune, and such was the simplicity of his manners, and such his frugality, that he lived, contented and happy, on his income. Our family consisted of my father and mother, of three children, and of my grandmother, a centenarian, whose clear and lucid memory contained a wealthy mine of historical facts that an antiquarian or chronicler would have been proud to possess. In the cold winter days the family assembled in the hall, where a goodly fire blazed on the hearth, and while the wind whistled outside, our grandmother, an exile from Acadia, would relate to us the stirring scenes she had witnessed when her people were driven from their homes by the British, their sufferings during their long pilgrimage overland from Maryland to the wilds of Louisiana, the dangers that beset them on their long journey through endless forests, along the precipitous banks of rivers too deep to be forded, among hostile Indians, that followed them stealthily, like wolves, day and night, ever ready to pounce upon them and massacre them. And as she spoke, we drew closer to her, and grouped around her and stirred not, lest we lose one of her words.