and social, full of humor and mirth, oftentimes filling the house with his jocund laugh.”  She, however, “true to her refined womanly instinct, her sense of propriety, rarely disturbed by his merry and harmless jests, with great discretion pursued ’the even tenor of her way.’  Patiently and with unfaltering devotion to the higher and nobler purposes of life, she always maintained her self-possession, strenuously avoided all levity and frivolity, rarely relaxed the gravity of her deportment, and never failed in the end of controlling both husband and household.”

Eugene’s own picture of his grandmother is contained in the following passage in an article contributed by him to the Ladies’ Home Journal: 

“Grandma was a pillar in the Congregational Church.  At the decline and disintegration of the Universalist society, she rejoiced cordially as if a temple of Baal or an idol of Ashtaroth had been overturned.  Yes, grandma was Puritanical—­not to the extent of persecution, but a Puritan in the severity of her faith and in the exacting nicety of her interpretation of her duties to God and mankind.  Grandma’s Sunday began at six o’clock Saturday evening; by that hour her house was swept and garnished, and her lamps trimmed, every preparation made for a quiet, reverential observance of the Sabbath Day.  There was no cooking on Sunday.  At noon Mrs. Deacon Ranney and other old ladies used to come from church with grandma to eat luncheon and discuss the sermon and suggest deeds of piety for the ensuing week.  I remember Mrs. Deacon Ranney and her frigid companions very distinctly.  They never smiled and they wore austere bombazines that rustled and squeaked dolorously.  Mrs. Deacon Ranney seldom noticed me further than to regard me with a look that seemed to stigmatize me as an incipient vessel of wrath that was not to be approved of, and I never liked Mrs. Deacon Ranney after I heard her reminding grandma one day that Solomon had truly said, ’spare the rod and spoil the child.’  I still think ill of Mrs. Deacon Ranney for having sought to corrupt dear old grandma’s gentle nature with any such incendiary suggestions.  The meeting-house was cold and draughty, and the seats, with their straight backs, were oh, so hard.  Grandma’s pew was near the pulpit.  I remember now how ashamed I used to be to carry her footstove all the way up that long aisle for her—­I was such a foolish little boy then—­and now, ah me, how ready and glad and proud I should be to do that service for dear old grandma!

“When grandma went to meeting she carried a lovely big black velvet bag; it had a bouquet wrought in beads of subdued color upon it, and it hung by two sombre silk puckering ribbons over grandma’s arm.  In the bag grandma carried a supply of crackers and peppermint lozenges, and upon these she would nibble in meeting whenever she felt that feeling of goneness in the pit of her stomach, which I was told old ladies sometimes