One winter evening, in a snugly built little stone cottage near the northern border of Vermont, a young family of three had gathered beside a glowing hearth and a cheerful lamp to enjoy an hour of that contentment which is most deeply felt when the fire is bright, the curtain closely drawn, and a storm is raging without. It was the birthday of the child Samuel. He was three years old, and as a birthday indulgence, he was to sit up until seven o’clock, and carve things with the jack-knife that his father, himself a carver of renown, had brought him as a birthday gift. This was by no means his first adventure with a knife. For a year or more he had managed a knife, at first feebly, but later with an astonishing ease. His father was proud of the infant Phidias, and even his mother had ceased to be terror-stricken at the conjunction of child and knife. The motions of the boy Samuel were happy and accurate. At the present hour, such gestures as his would be called eurhythmic, or something of that sort; even in those days of preposterous precocity, he was regarded with wonder. It was the month and the year when for the first time there was a Confederacy, with a President to be prayed for, or else against. Stirring era! No lack of interesting items for the father to read aloud from his Weekly; Nancy, the young wife busy with her sewing, was as deeply interested as he himself in the doings at Fort Sumter. Her comments on Lincoln and Davis were no less keen than his. With eyes now bent on her work, a fine linen handkerchief to be hemmed on four sides, and now returning to the child seated on the braided rug at her feet, she still had time and thought to give to her husband’s reading; at twenty-three, she rejoiced to be living in portentous times. And pray do not imagine that because the home was remote from great cities, the mother necessarily comported herself as a poor rustic creature, or as one unfamiliar with the counsels of “Godey’s Lady’s Book.” Her ample gown was of the finest cashmere, triple-dyed of a deep rose-color, and it was well spread out upon a hoop-skirt which she managed with the kind of skill that a rose in full bloom must employ when keeping its petals in order.