Rev. Joseph Badger had indeed a noble ancestry; and, in natural ability, in creative and executive intellect, in force of character and in general usefulness, he is probably unexcelled by the worthy examples that in past time may have shed honor upon the name. I have dwelt thus long on the parentage and ancestry of Mr. B., not because I regard the tenacity of the Jewish race on the subject of lineage, nor the general excess of oriental homage to departed fathers, but because we appreciate the law of cause and effect, as it is manifested in the course of hereditary descent, which forbids that any man's written history shall begin like the priesthood of Melchizedek, successionless and without descent. In approaching another chapter, the early life of Mr. Badger, perhaps nothing is more strikingly appropriate to the reader than the exclamation which stands as the first line of an old manuscript from his own pen, with which he begins his personal narrative, viz.: "_What a mystery is Life!_" Ah! who can wrestle with this wonder so as to exhaust it of its marvellousness? Who can explain the innate genius, and impulse, with the endless play of outward circumstance, that so constantly drive these human myriads on to their various destiny? Scribes can record what outwardly transpires; and even the reason can do nothing more than to look through the cluster of outward development we call man's history, to its centre in the inward life, where, though it may see the harmonious relationship of the facts to the soul whence they have flown; where, though it may perceive the combination of mental and moral qualities that make up the man, it is at last obliged to own the impenetrability of the veil that hides the _genius_ that has taken individual form for some end of its own; and through the whole drama of man it owns that life is enacted in the temple of mystery. Mr. Badger's written journal, among its opening paragraphs, has the following quotation: "'Tis Heaven's decree, in mercy, that mankind Should to their future destiny be blind; Impatient man rejects his present state, With eager steps to meet approaching fate, Yet would the future, in perspective cast, Display the exact resemblance of the past; When o'er the stage of human life we range, The _scenes_ continue but the _actors_ change." CHAPTER II. CHILDHOOD.