When the church choir would break down, everybody looked around to see if he were not ready with “Woodstock,” “Mount Pisgah” or “Uxbridge.”  And when all his familiar tunes failed to express the joy of his soul, he would take up his own pen, draw five long lines across the sheet, put in the notes, and then to the tune he called “Bound Brook,” begin to sing: 

    As when the weary traveller gains
      The height of some o’erlooking hill,
    His heart revives if ’cross the plains
      He eyes his home, though distant still;

    Thus, when the Christian pilgrim views,
      By faith, his mansion in the skies,
    The sight his fainting strength renews,
      And wings his speed to reach the prize.

    ’Tis there, he says, I am to dwell
      With Jesus in the realms of day;
    There I shall bid my cares farewell
      And He will wipe my tears away.

He knew about all the cheerful tunes that were ever printed in old “New Brunswick Collection,” and the “Shunway,” and the sweetest melodies that Thomas Hastings ever composed.  He took the pitch of sacred song on Sabbath morning, and kept it through all the week.

My father was the only person whom I ever knew without any element of fear.  I do not believe he understood the sensation.

Seated in a waggon one day during a runaway that every moment threatened our demolition, he was perfectly calm.  He turned around to me, a boy of seven years, and said, “DeWitt, what are you crying about?  I guess we can ride as fast as they can run.”

There was one scene I remember, that showed his poise and courage as nothing else could.  He was Sheriff of Somerset County, N.J., and we lived in the court house, attached to which was the County Jail.  During my father’s absence one day a prisoner got playing the maniac, dashing things to pieces, vociferating horribly, and flourishing a knife with which he had threatened to carve any one who came near the wicket of his prison, Constables were called in to quell this real or dramatised maniac, but they fell back in terror from the door of the prison.  Their show of firearms made no impression upon the demented wretch.  After awhile my father returned and was told of the trouble, and indeed he heard it before he reached home.  The whole family implored him not to go near the man who was cursing, and armed with a knife.  But father could not be deterred.  He did not stand outside the door and at a safe distance, but took the key and opened the door, and without any weapon of defence came upon the man, thundering at him, “Sit down and give me that knife!” The tragedy was ended.  I never remember to have heard him make a gloomy remark.  This was not because he had no perception of the pollutions of society.  I once said to my father, “Are people so much worse now than they used to-be?” He made no answer for a minute, for the old people do not like to confess much to the boys.  But after awhile his eye twinkled and he said:  “Well, DeWitt, the fact is that people were never any better than they ought to be.”