These joyous outings were often shared by the young people from Vaucluse, where every summer “Shepherd Tom” (Thomas Hazard) gathered about him the clans of Hazard and of Minturn. Mr. Hazard’s wife, dead long before this time, was one of the beautiful Minturn sisters; from her Shepherd Tom inherited a large family connection, to every branch of which he showed endless hospitality. Beside the five Hazard children there were relays of Minturns, Mayers, Halls, Blacklers, Birckheads, and Hunters, who came and went in dazzling succession. Taken altogether, they were the handsomest family I have ever seen. Beside their beauty and charm, they had certain characteristics that set them apart from the rest of us. They seemed to hold some secret knowledge of and communion with nature that gave them a power over animals; they understood the language of horses, dogs, even insects; they had no fear of any living thing,--knew snakes, bees, spiders, toads, for their friends. They seemed more like a race of fauns and dryads than mere flesh-and-blood boys and girls. The four slim, graceful Hazard girls were overshadowed by their father, a rustic, vigorous man, who left his mark on his generation, and is remembered to-day by a volume of essays, “Johnny Cake Papers”, later handsomely reprinted by a nephew of the Peacedale branch of the clan. The Hazards were Friends; when I first remember him Shepherd Tom went regularly to Quaker Meeting. He was rough in manner, careless in dress, and thought too little about his appearance. One Sunday morning on his return from meeting, he was seen to go hurriedly to a mirror, where he gazed hard at his reflection. He quickly saw why the folks at meeting had looked at him so curiously. He had a thick crop of tiny blond curls. The mirror showed each of these curls tied up with a bit of scarlet wool. While he slept on the porch before going to meeting, some of the younger children had played this scurvy trick upon him. If it were meant as a lesson, perhaps he deserved it, for the relatives of his beautiful young wife remembered her mortification when he came into the drawing-room where she was receiving guests from Newport, fresh from killing a sheep, his white smock showing the telltale scarlet stains. Mr. Hazard took some pains to win great influence in the Rhode Island Legislature. This was a puzzle to his friends till they learned that his object was the abolition of capital punishment in the State. He did not rest until the death penalty was done away with, after which he retired into private life, and, as I think, never again meddled with public affairs.