about him, and did not discuss him before the children.  But nevertheless, be he a crank, or a fanatic, or what he may, one thing is sure, the richest milk of human kindness flowed from that heart and devoted itself sincerely to the uplift of humanity.  I remember him with love, love deep and sacred, up to this present time.  However great an extremist John Brown was, there were many of them in New England.  Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown never could agree.  John Brown used to criticise Wendell Phillips severely.  He said that Wendell Phillips could not see to read the clearest signs of revolution, and he was reminded by the husband who bought a grave-stone that had been carved for another woman, but the stone-cutter said “That has the name of another person.”  “Oh,” said the widower, “that makes no difference; my wife couldn’t read.”  John Brown once said of Wm. Lloyd Garrison that he couldn’t see the point and was like the woman who never could see a joke.  One morning, seated at the breakfast table, her husband cracked a joke, but she did not smile, when he said, “Mary, you could not see a joke if it were fired at you from a Dalgreen gun,” whereupon she remarked:  “Now John, you know they do not fire jokes out of a gun.”  Well do I recall that December 2d of 1859.  Only a few weeks before John Brown came to our house and my father subscribed to the purchase of rifles to aid in the attempt to raise the insurrection among the slaves.  The last time I saw John Brown he was in the wagon with my father.  Father gave him the reins and came back as though he had forgotten something.  John Brown said, “Boys, stay at home; stay at home!  Now, remember, you may never see me again,” and then in a lower voice, “And I do not think you ever will see me again,” but “Remember the advice of your Uncle Brown (as we called him), and stay at home with the old folks, and remember that you will be more blessed here than anywhere else on earth.”  The happiest place on earth for me is still at my old home in Litchfield, Connecticut.  I did not understand him then, but on December 2d at eleven o’clock my father called us all into the house and all that hour from eleven to twelve o’clock we sat there in perfect silence.  As the old clock in that kitchen struck eleven, I heard the bell, ring from the Methodist Church, its peal coming up the valley, from hill to hill, and echoing its sad tone as the hour wore on.  The peal of that bell remains with me now; it has ever been a source of inspiration to me.  Sixty times struck that old bell.  Once a minute, and when the long sad hour was over, father put his Bible upon the mantel and went slowly out, and we all solemnly followed, going to our various duties.  That solemn hour had a voice in the coming great Civil War of 1861-65.  At that hour John Brown was hanged in Virginia.  All through New England, they kept that hour with the same solemn services which characterized my father’s family.  When the call came for volunteers the young men of