It was May—the cherry trees were in bloom. For the first time in three years I had been able to sit for an evening among a company of persons (invalids like myself seeking strength), trying to entertain them with some remembrances of bygone days. I see it still, the broad parlor of that grand old “Hillside Home,” the mother and inspiration of all the hundreds of sanitariums and health restoring institutions of the country to-day. I had made my home near it, at the foot of the blossoming orchard. Down among the trees and twittering robins next morning came one of my listeners; a broad-shouldered, manly looking man, the face so full of benign intelligence that once seen was never to be forgotten. He came in at the open door, merrily shaking off the cherry blossoms like large flakes of early snow, an entire stranger to me until the previous evening. He seated himself and entered into conversation with a familiar ease that bespoke the cultured gentleman. After a few minutes he turned earnestly to me with: “Miss Barton, I have an errand in coming to you. I have a request to make.” I said I hoped I should be able to comply. He hesitated, as if thinking how to commence, but at length said: “I want you to recall and write the first thing you remember—the first event that made sufficient impression upon you to be remembered.” I waited in silence and he went on: “And then I want you to write the next, and then the next, and so on, until you have written all—everything connected with yourself and your life that you can recall. I want it; we want it; the world wants it, and again I ask you to do it. Can you promise me?” His earnest manner demanded an earnest reply. I could not promise to do it, but would promise to consider it. This was in the spring of 1876. I have never forgotten the request through all these thirty-one busy years, and have carefully kept the promise to consider it; and to-night take my pencil to describe the first moment of my life that I remember. By the dates I must have been nearly two and a half years old, for I was born on Christmas day, and now the lilacs were in bloom. It was a rather newly built country house where I had commenced my earthly pilgrimage, and being the youngest by a dozen or so years, of a family of two brothers and two sisters, I naturally lacked child playmates and was left much to my own entertainment. On this occasion I must have been enjoying a ramble by myself in the grass-green dooryard, with the broad hand-hewn doorstep and the traditional lilacs on either side. Suddenly my resounding cries brought the whole family to the door in alarm. My wailing took the form of a complaint expressed with my best linguistic ability: “Baby los’ ’im—pitty bird—baby los’ ’im—baby mos’ caught him—pitty bird—baby mos’ caught ’im.” At length they succeeded in inducing me to listen to a question, “But where did it go, Baby?”