The furnishing of our home had absorbed a good portion of the three thousand dollars I had received from my partner, and my living expenses together with what it was necessary for me to do toward the support of my parents and sisters exhausted my income. My always-cheerful and devoted wife, and my boy, just arriving at an interesting age, made home so attractive that I was able to forget business when away from the office. Each morning with the parting caress came words of loving encouragement that did much to support me through the day, and at night on my return home, my greeting from wife and boy always dispelled the clouds hanging over me. I was happy, infinitely so, despite the business worry. My physicians had advised my leaving Brooklyn for a dryer atmosphere. We had a lease of our house until the spring of 1876, but had decided that then we would try country life. Many hours were passed pleasantly in discussing the plan and its probable results. My wife's fertile brain would paint to me in pleasing colors what the country home should be--the cottage and its coziness, the garden, the lawn and flowers, my health restored, the benefit of country life to the boy, and the relief to my mind through largely reduced living expenses. We were eager for the time to come to make the change. On the twelfth of December our second child was born. My first boy had a brother, and again my wife, noble woman, gave testimony of her great love. No trials that came to her prevented the outpouring of that love to me. She knew how I needed her fond encouragement, particularly at that period, and she gave it to me daily, always with the same sweet smile and tender caress. That winter will never be forgotten by me for the torture which I suffered from the almost nightly attacks of that awful rheumatism. Medicine did not seem of any use. Night after night until long past midnight my devoted wife, with ceaseless energy, would apply every few moments hot applications to relieve the cruel pains, until finally I would fall asleep for a few hours' rest. I lost flesh rapidly, and when spring came was hardly more than a semblance of my former self. It was indeed time that I should shake the dust of Brooklyn from my feet. Before the winter was over we had commenced to scan the advertising columns of the daily papers for "country places to rent." We wanted if possible to get a place in the mountainous section of New Jersey. I wanted to get away from air off the salt water and this section of the country seemed the best. It must be healthy and at a low rent. For the rest we must take what we could get at the price we could pay. Our search ended in our taking a place of about six acres, five minutes' walk from a station on the Morris & Essex Railroad, between Summit and Morristown. On the property was a farm-house more than one hundred years old, and this the owner repaired and improved by building an extra room and a piazza across the front of the house.