“Yes, and a very pretty little creature she was,” said mamma, with a sister’s pride in the youngest of the family.  “She was extremely small for her age—­indeed, she weighed only three pounds and a half at her birth, and I recollect hearing some one say that the nurse put her into the family coffee-pot and shut down the lid.”

“The coffee-pot!” we all exclaimed, in chorus.  “Pray how large was it?  Somewhat over the ordinary size, I trust.”

Mamma laughed.  “Yes, it was larger than coffee-pots of the present day,” she said; “an old-fashioned tin coffee-pot, broad at the bottom and gradually narrowing towards the top.  But still it was extraordinary that a baby could be put in it, and the lid shut down.”

“What induced grandpapa to select Pennsylvania for a residence, Aunt Esther?” inquired Ida.  “Was land cheaper there than elsewhere?”

“You have answered your question yourself, dear,” was mamma’s reply.  “Land was very cheap there, and through our careful economy in Vermont, father had saved enough money to buy about two hundred acres, to which he subsequently added, from time to time, so that the old Greeley homestead now consists of between three and four hundred acres.  Then two of father’s brothers, Uncle Benjamin and Uncle Leonard, had settled in Wayne township three or four years previous, and, to use your papa’s words, had ’made holes in the tall, dense forest that covered nearly all that region for twenty to fifty miles in every direction.’  Father went to Pennsylvania in advance of us, bought his land, and then returned to fetch us to our new home.

“I remember seeing mother weep bitterly when she left Vermont; but, as ever through her brave life, she made no complaint.  As for myself, I remember no regrets, save at parting with dear brother; for I was too young to feel other than childish exultation at the prospect of making a long journey; and that journey from Vermont to our new home upon the ‘State line,’ between New York and Pennsylvania, I must here remark, occupied a month.  Locomotion, you see, was not so rapid in the year 1826 as it is now.”

“I should think not!” exclaimed Gabrielle.  “Pray, auntie, in what way did you travel to advance at such a snail’s pace?  I should think you could almost have walked the distance in that length of time.”

“You will be amused when I tell you the length of the first day’s journey,” replied mamma.  “Father hired a large wagon, and stowed away our trunks, furniture, and all of his family in it, and we went as far as Whitehall, a distance of about nine miles.  Here we stopped over night, and the next day took the boat for Troy, where we again broke the journey after travelling, I believe, two days.  At that time there were no regular ferry-boats to cross the river from East to West Troy, and passengers were taken over in row-boats.  I remember that the boatmen stood by the river-side and called all day and night: