And I shall always marvel at our family doctor.
Dear old Dr. Skillman! My father’s doctor,
my mother’s doctor, in the village home!
He carried all the confidences of all the families
for ten miles around. We all felt better as soon
as we saw him enter the house. His face pronounced
a beatitude before he said a word. He welcomed
all of us children into life, and he closed the old
people’s eyes.
1845-1869
When moving out of a house I have always been in the
habit, after everything was gone, of going into each
room and bidding it a mute farewell. There are
the rooms named after the different members of the
family. I suppose it is so in all households.
It was so in mine; we named the rooms after the persons
who occupied them. I moved from the house of
my boyhood with a sort of mute affection for its remembrances
that are most vivid in its hours of crisis and meditation.
Through all the years that have intervened there is
no holier sanctuary to me than the memory of my mother’s
vacant chair. I remember it well. It made
a creaking noise as it moved. It was just high
enough to allow us children to put our heads into
her lap. That was the bank where we deposited
all our hurts and worries.
Some time ago, in an express train, I shot past that
old homestead. I looked out of the window and
tried to peer through the darkness. While I was
doing so, one of my old schoolmates, whom I had not
seen for many years, tapped me on the shoulder, and
said: “DeWitt, I see you are looking out
at the scenes of your boyhood.”
“Oh, yes,” I replied, “I was looking
out at the old place where my mother lived and died.”
I pass over the boyhood days and the country school.
The first real breath of life is in young manhood,
when, with the strength of the unknown, he dares to
choose a career. I first studied for the law,
at the New York University.
New York in 1850 was a small place compared to the
New York of to-day, but it had all the effervescence
and glitter of the entire country even then.
I shall never forget the excitement when on September
1st, 1850, Jenny Lind landed from the steamer “Atlantic.”
Not merely because of her reputation as a singer,
but because of her fame for generosity and kindness
were the people aroused to welcome her. The first
$10,000 she earned in America she devoted to charity,
and in all the cities of America she poured forth
her benefactions. Castle Garden was then the
great concert hall of New York, and I shall never forget
the night of her first appearance. I was a college
boy, and Jenny Lind was the first great singer I ever
heard. There were certain cadences in her voice
that overwhelmed the audience with emotion. I
remember a clergyman sitting near me who was so overcome
that he was obliged to leave the auditorium.
The school of suffering and sorrow had done as much
for her voice as the Academy of Stockholm.
