In this old house, upon the morning of August twenty-second, 1841, to Ward Glazier and Mehitable, his wife, a son was born who was subsequently named Willard. The father and mother were by no means sentimental people--they were certainly not given to seeing the poetical side of life; they were plain, earnest people, rough hewn out of the coarse fibre of Puritanism, but the advent of this little child brought a joy to their hearts that had its softening influence upon the home in which he was to be reared. The thoroughness of Ward Glazier's nature, that conscientiousness in excess which made him radical in all things, was of the _heart_ as well as of the head, and though not a demonstrative man, the intensity of his paternal love cropped out in many ways. As to his wife, hers was truly "mother's love." And what notes are there attuned to sacred music, in all the broad vocabulary of the English tongue, which gives any idea of the sentiment that links a woman to her babe, except the three simple syllables, "mother's love!" Brooding over the tiny stranger, ready to laugh or cry; exultant with hope and pride, despondent with fear, quivering with anguish if the "wind of heaven doth visit its cheek too roughly," and singing hosannas of joy when it lisps the simpler syllables that she so patiently has taught, covering it with the broad wing of her measureless affection, and lavishing upon it such "sighs as perfect joy perplexed for utterance, steals from her sister sorrow," there is nothing except God's own illimitable affection for his creatures, that can rival in depth and strength and comprehensiveness, a mother's love. The heart of Ward Glazier's wife, at this time, blossomed in absolutely rank luxuriance with this feeling, and ran riot in the joy of its possession; but she determined within herself that it should be no blind or foolish worship. It grew, therefore, into a sober, careful, provident affection. Quiet and unobtrusive in manner, her face always wore a look of gravity befitting one who felt that God had entrusted to her charge a fresh human soul to mould for good or evil. She fully realized the fact that her son would grow up with honor or sink down into ignominy just as she should guide or spoil him in his youth. She quite comprehended the stubborn truth, that while the father to some extent may shape the outward career of his son, the mother is responsible for the coloring of his inner life: and that "All we learn of good is learned in youth, When passion's heat is pure, when love is truth."