LEAVING NEW YORK CITY FOR HOME.
We thought it was about time we started for home. We began to want to get
back to Michigan, so we agreed to start. Brother J. S. was to take the
"Harlem Railroad," go to uncle's, stop and visit, get mother and meet us,
on a certain day at Albany. My wife and I took the "Hudson River
Railroad" and came as far as Peekskill. We visited together the place of
her nativity, where she lived until she was twelve years old. She found
many very warm friends there among her relatives. We passed through
Peekskill hollow to visit some of her friends. There I saw some beautiful
land. It looked nice enough for western land, if it had not been for the
rugged scenery around it.
When the day came, that we were to meet mother at Albany, we took the
cars and started. When we passed Fishkill I knew the place well. I had
been there a number of times before, when I was a boy. Newburg, on the
opposite side of the river, appeared the most natural of any place I had
seen. Along the river it appeared beautiful, and the mountains grand. It
was the first time I had been there since we moved to Michigan. We soon
passed Poughkeepsie, the place where we took the night boat, so many
years before, bound for the territory of Michigan.
As we approached the Catskill mountains, I should say ten or fifteen
miles away, they looked like a dark cloud stretched across the horizon;
and when we came nearer and nearer the highest one, and it was in plain
sight, it appeared majestic and grand. From the car window, we could see
the mountain house that stood upon its towering summit. We could see
small clouds, floating along by the top of the mountain. That was the
greatest mountain I had ever seen; yet it is small in comparison to some
in our own country. Not one third so high in the world as Fremont's peak,
where he unfurled the banner of our country, threw it to the breeze and
it proudly floated in the wind, higher than it had ever been before.
We soon got to Albany, went to a hotel near the railroad depot, called
for a room and told the landlord that we would occupy it until the next
morning. As mother could not rest on the cars, I thought it would be
easier for her to stay there over night, and we would see some of the
western part of the state of New York the next day.
After dinner we locked up our room and Mrs. Nowlin and I went out to take
a look at Albany. We went up to the state house, the capitol, and visited
the room, where the legislators of the "Empire state" meet to make laws
for her people. There we saw the statue of the extraordinary man,
Secretary of State and statesman, William H. Seward. He, who shortly
after, was attacked by an assassin, where he lay sick upon his bed, in
his room at Washington and was so severely wounded, that the nation
despaired of his life for some time.
We went back to the hotel, and as the time was nearly up for the Harlem
train from New York City, I went back across the river to meet mother and
brother John Smith. The train shortly came in and they had come. Brother
had mother upon his arm. She was very glad to see me. I got hold of her
and she had two strong arms of her boys to lean upon. I told her we had a
room over in Albany and were keeping house; that we would stop there all
night and start again in the morning. It would make it more easy for her,
and we would not have those jingling, rattling cars passing in the night,
to keep us awake. We crossed over the river and went to our quarters. We
four were all together again and had some new things to tell each other
as we had been apart a few days. We passed the night very comfortably.
Early the next morning a regiment of soldiers, from the west, came
hurrying on to the seat of war to defend the flag of our Country and the
glorious Union. It rained very hard, I stood one side and noticed the
"Boys in Blue" as they came pouring out of the depot. Their officers did
not seem to have them under very good control. Their discipline wasn't
very good yet; after they got out, there were several of them who seemed
to be inclined to go on their own hooks. The officers had about all they
could do to keep them along. One physically powerful, hardy looking man
passed near me. He said, he thought it was a little hard, early in the
morning, after a fellow had been jammed and bruised all night and it
rained that he couldn't be allowed to stop and take a drop. The officer
told him to keep in the ranks. I felt interested to know if they were
Michigan men, but was not able to learn where they were from.
In a few minutes we were aboard of our train and started again for
Michigan. The prospect of getting home soon elated mother very much. She
had lost most of her attachment for her native place, and it was no
comparison, in her mind, to her Michigan. She said uncle offered to give
her a farm, if she would move back there and spend the remainder of her
days by him. But it was nothing in comparison to Michigan, it was an
inducement far too small for her to consider favorably. We were coming
home as fast as steam could bring us and it was raining all the time. I
told mother I thought we should run out from under the rain clouds before
night, but that was a mistake. It rained all day long and was dark when
we got to the suspension bridge. When we got off the cars, the runners
were a great annoyance to mother. I told her not to pay any attention to
them, we would find a good place. There was a gentleman standing near us,
who heard what I said. He told me that there was a good house, the "New
York Hotel," which stood close by. Said he was not interested for any,
but that that house was a good one. I told mother we would go there and
we started. I was helping mother along and told my wife and brother to
follow us. It was hard work for them to get away from the runners. They
hated very much to give them up, and they were making as much noise over
them as a flock of wild geese. But my wife and brother left them and
followed us. We got to the "New York House" and called for a room. We
found it to be a very good house. We wanted to stay over night there, as
it would be better for mother and we wished to go up and see the Falls
next day. The next morning after breakfast my wife, brother and I went up
to the Falls. As it was still raining mother stayed in her room, she
didn't wish to go.
We went up on the American side and went down three hundred steps of
stairs to the foot of the Falls. After this we viewed Goat Island, went
across it to the stone tower, went up its rickety winding stairs to the
top and looked upon the majestic scenery of nature, which was spread out
before us there. I saw no place there where it appeared so terribly grand
to me as it did when I stood at the foot of the Falls. There we went out
on the rocks as far as we could, and not get too wet with the spray, and
viewed the water as it poured over the cataract and plunged into the
abyss below, beat itself into foam and spray, which settled together
again and formed the angry waves that went rolling and tumbling away to
the sea. There I heard the sound of many waters thundering in their fall
and I thought, while looking at that sublime and wonderful display of
nature, that the waters of the river and creeks of my own "Peninsula
State," after turning hundreds of mills, slaking thirst and giving life
to both man and beast, came there for an outlet. It plunges into Niagara
River and goes gliding away to the ocean; some of it to be picked up by
the wind and rays of the sun and rise in vapor. When formed into clouds
in the atmosphere it is borne back on the wings of the wind, condensed by
the cold air and falls in copious showers of rain upon the earth, to
purify the atmosphere, moisten and fertilize the fields and cause
vegetation to spring forth in its beauty. The rain falling upon the just
and the unjust makes the heart of the husbandman leap for joy, at the
prospect of a bountiful harvest, causes the foliage and the gardens to
put on a more beautiful green, the lilies of the valley and the rose in
the garden ("the transient stars of earth") to unfold themselves more
beautifully. Then the cloud passes away, bearing and sprinkling the
limpid fluid upon other lands, and the sun looks out upon the cool,
healthful, invigorating and refreshing scene. The beautiful rainbow, in
its splendor, seems to span the arch of heaven, placed there as a token
of remembrance, so long before. It lasts but a little while and then
disappears, the cloud also passes away. In this and similar ways the
rivers and creeks are kept supplied with water and the Falls of Niagara
kept continually roaring.
We went back to the "New York House" and shortly after took the cars for
Dearborn. We arrived there about ten o'clock in the evening. Mother
walked home, to the "Castle," a mile, very spryly. She seemed to feel
first rate. She was pleased to get home. Father and the family had
retired for the night when we got there, but father soon had a light and
a fire and was ready to listen to our stories. We told him how near we
had come losing mother. That uncle had offered to give her a farm if she
would come back, live on it and spend her days by him. We told him what
farm it was; he knew the place as he was well acquainted in that country.
We told him if she went back they could go together and he could carry on
the farm. But the inducement was far too small for them to entertain the
thought of going, for a moment. Michigan was their home, had won their
affections and was their favorite place.
I told father, that he must go and visit his native place, see how rough
it was and I would go with him. I thought it would appear rougher to him
than he expected or could imagine. He said he would like to go back
sometime and see the country once more. He kept putting it off from year
to year. It is said, "Procrastination is the thief of time." He never
went. He bought him eight acres more land joining his two places. He paid
for it seventy dollars an acre and had some money left.
Part of the eight acres was a ridge covered with chestnut trees. Father
enjoyed himself there very much, a few of the last falls of his life,
picking up chestnuts. He was a man a little over six feet tall. He walked
straight and erect until the sickness, which terminated his existence in
time, at the age of seventy-six years, in the year 1869. He went the way
of all the earth. The rest of the family and I, missed him very much. Our
counselor and one of our best friends was gone. He had fought his last
battle and finished his course.
Mother survived him. She gave each of the children a silver piece (they
were all old coins of different nations and times, each worth a dollar or
more) which father had saved in an early day. They were in mother's work
basket in the dark room at Buffalo, were brought in it, through the
fearful storm on Lake Erie, to Michigan and saved through all of our hard
times in the wilderness. I have my piece yet, as a keepsake, and I think
my brother and sisters have theirs. After father's death, mother still
lived at the "Castle" and my sister Bessie, who took all the care of her
in her old age that was possible, stayed with her. All the rest of the
children did every thing they could for her comfort. She felt lonesome
without father, with whom she had spent nearly fifty years of her life.
She lived a little over three years after he was gone and followed him.
She was seventy-one years old, in 1873, when her voice was hushed in
death and mother too was gone.
We laid her by father's side in a place selected by himself for that
purpose. It is a beautiful place, about a mile and a half southwest of
where they lived and in plain sight of what was their home.
Long before this there was a voice of one often heard in prayer in the
wilderness, where we first settled, and that voice was mother's.
Father and mother believed in one faith and mother from her youth. For
years they tried to walk hand in hand, in the straight and narrow path,
looking for and hastening to a better country than they had been able to
find on this mundane sphere.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Bark Covered House, by William Nowlin