A War Episode--I Meet my Fater--I Marry and Make a Home--The Ups and Downs of Life Lead to a Happy Old Age I In bringing these desultory--perhaps too fragmentary--recollections to a close the writer may not be denied his final word. This shall neither be self-confident nor overstated; the rather a confession of faith somewhat in rejection of political and religious pragmatism. In both his experience has been ample if not exhaustive. During the period of their serial publication he has received many letters--suggestive, informatory and critical--now and again querulous--which he has not failed to consider, and, where occasion seemed to require, to pursue to original sources in quest of accuracy. In no instance has he found any essential error in his narrative. Sometimes he has been charged with omissions--as if he were writing a history of his own times--whereas he has been only, and he fears, most imperfectly, relating his immediate personal experience. I was born in the Presbyterian Church, baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, educated in the Church of England in America and married into the Church of the Disciples. The Roman Catholic baptism happened in this way: It was my second summer; my parents were sojourning in the household of a devout Catholic family; my nurse was a fond, affectionate Irish Catholic; the little life was almost despaired of, so one sunny day, to rescue me from that form of theologic controversy known as infant damnation, the baby carriage was trundled round the corner to Saint Matthew's Church--it was in the national capital--and the baby brow was touched with holy water out of a font blessed of the Virgin Mary. Surely I have never felt or been the worse for it. Whilst I was yet too young to understand I witnessed an old-fashioned baptism of the countryside. A person who had borne a very bad character in the neighborhood was being immersed. Some one, more humorous than reverent, standing near me, said as the man came to the surface, "There go his sins, men and brethren, there go his sins"; and having but poor eyesight I thought I saw them passing down the stream never to trouble him, or anybody, more. I can see them still floating, floating down the stream, out and away from the sight of men. Does this make me a Baptist, I wonder? I fear not, I fear not; because I am unable to rid myself of the impression that there are many roads leading to heaven, and I have never believed in what is called close communion. I have not hated and am unable to hate any man because either in political or in religious opinion he differs from me and insists upon voting his party ticket and worshiping his Creator according to his conscience. Perfect freedom of conscience and thought has been my lifelong contention.