I remember when a mere lad
hearing him pray in the hog-pen. It was a time of unusual religious
excitement with him, no doubt; I heard, and ran away, knowing it was
not for me to hear.
Father had red hair, and a ruddy, freckled face. He was
tender-hearted and tearful, but with blustering ways and a harsh,
strident voice. Easily moved to emotion, he was as transparent as a
child, with a child's lack of self-consciousness. Unsophisticated,
he had no art to conceal anything, no guile, and, as Mother used to
say, no manners. "All I ever had," Father would rejoin, "for I've
never used any of them." I doubt if he ever said "Thank you" in his
life; I certainly never heard him. He had nothing to conceal, and
could not understand that others might have. I have heard him ask
people what certain things cost, men their politics, women their ages,
with the utmost ingenuousness. One day when he and I were in
Poughkeepsie, we met a strange lad on the street with very red hair,
and Father said to him, "I can remember when my hair was as red as
yours." The boy stared at him and passed on.
Although Father lacked delicacy, he did not lack candor or
directness. He would tell a joke on himself with the same glee
that he would on any one else. . . . I have heard him tell how,
in 1844, at the time of the "anti-renters," when he saw the posse
coming, he ran over the hill to Uncle Daniel's and crawled under
the bed, but left his feet sticking out, and there they found him.
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