In the cow barn lived the red cow and her calf. She was a famous milker, giving her sixteen quarts regularly. In the stable there were horses. Papa rode like a centaur. To see him mounted on his black mare Breeze, cantering along Bird Lane, was a revelation of grace and skill I have yet to see surpassed by Bedouin of the desert or Hyde Park dandy. My little brother is closely linked with these memories of Green Peace. Can I remember it, or do I remember my mother’s telling me of this conversation between her and me? “Mama, I am sorry you are so old!” “Why, darling?” “Because you cannot play with me!” This was just before little Sam’s birth, when she, nimblest of playfellows, was weary with carrying her precious burthen: “The hyacinthine boy, for whom Morn well might break and April bloom.” His little life, four short years, has been told by his mother in what I believe to be a unique biography. He was a large handsome boy, full of vitality and charm. His death of diphtheritic croup, at the age of four, brought a desolation to our house, which, after all these years, I recall as if it had lately happened. My clearest memory of him is lying surrounded by flowers, a beautiful little marble figure, with lovely, half-closed violet eyes. A portrait preserves this last look. It always hung, framed by a wreath of thorns, in his mother’s room. There is frequent mention of him in her diary; until the end of her long life, she saw him in her dreams. Her poems show the closeness of the bond between her and-- The love that never leaves me, The child that never grieves me. We had been three pairs; Julia and Flossie, Harry and Laura, Maud and Sam. I was now left an odd number. The elder children seemed much older; later the dividing years shrank to nothing. They were all precocious; I was the reverse. My mother used to comfort me by saying, “The oak is a tree of slow growth!” They all talked glibly together in Sdrawkcab (“Backwards”) a language I could not understand. The compensation for all this was that I was a great deal with both parents and their friends, though I remember Mama’s sometimes “borrowing a child” to play with me. The earliest letter I have from my father is written in sdrawkcab. To this day I am unable to understand the words, but the thought is plain: he was trying to help his youngest to enter into the elder children’s play. A letter from him to my Aunt Annie Mailliard written in 1864, describes us at this time. “Julia does not grow older.