The earliest recollection that I have of Father was of one spring day when he was chasing and stoning the cat, our pet cat, who had caught a bluebird. I remember the fierce look in the cat's eyes, and her nose flattened over the back of blue, her nervously twitching tail, and the speed and strength with which Father pursued her, and the language he used, language that impressed me, at least, if not the cat, and which discredited the cat and her ancestry as well. As I remember it we rescued the bluebird, and there the picture fades. Just how Father himself looked then I do not know; doubtless, childlike, I accepted him as a matter of course, along with all the other interesting things in this world in which I was finding myself. Again I remember riding on his shoulder in the downstairs hall, as he skipped about with me, and of being face to face, on equal terms, with the hall lamp, and of telling Father that when I grew up I was going to be a king, and of Father telling me at once that they hung kings on a sour-apple tree. It was always a sour-apple tree, never a sweet one, used for hangings. So I was glad to relinquish the idea of being a king and to become instead a "finder-out of things." How Father did laugh at that! He had been telling me something of his readings in astronomy and the sciences, just at that time coming into their own, and I was so impressed and fired with emulation that I, too, declared for wanting to be "a finder-out of things," and Father would repeat it and laugh heartily. It is a joy to think of him as he was then, virile in body, full fleshed, active, leading in walking and skating and swimming--what a flood of memories! What an interest he took in all the things I did, and how often a most active part. One day in May I had gone out with our one shot of shad net, and was to try an experiment. I had told Father that I would row a ways up the river and throw out the net and then row on up to the mouth of Black Creek and fish for perch, and when the tide turned would row out and take up the net, which would catch the flood slack not far above. What he thought I do not know, for he went to Dick Martin, an experienced shad fisherman, and told him what I was going to do. Dick hastened to tell him, in alarm, that what I intended was impossible, that there was a row of old stakes out from the black barn just below the mouth of Black Creek and that my net would get fast on these and I would lose it, and perhaps come to harm besides. So Father walked the two miles, hurrying up along the steep and rocky shore, and found me just coming out from the creek. He told me what Dick had said and got into the boat and we rowed out to the net, which was acting very queerly.