In the month of August, 1840, the twenty-seventh day, to be exact, I was
still at the “old H——n Place” with my grandparents. “Just before
bedtime” of the night of that day my grandmother called the attention of
the household to the mournful and unusual howls of the little house dog
that was sitting in the front yard with his nose pointed straight up,
crying most piteously.
The incident connected with that sad sound was destined to affect me so
nearly that I have never lost it, and can hear it to-day as clearly as I
heard it fifty-four years ago. In about three weeks after the
demonstration by the little dog, the news arrived that my father,
Lorenzo Dow Hawkins, to whom I was passionately attached, had died at
St. Louis, Mo., late in the afternoon of August 27th. My kind-hearted
old grandmother looked down tenderly upon me, and said, “I knew
something dreadful had happened. Poor child, you will never see your
father again!”
In 1854 I visited St. Louis and saw Dr. Simmons, who had attended my
father during his last illness, and he remembered his death having
occurred in the afternoon, probably, between five and six o’clock. The
difference in time between Vermont and Missouri, would make the moment
of his death late in the afternoon at one place and between eight and
nine at the other.
Since writing this account, a doubt has arisen in my mind in relation
to the time when the two important incidents occurred. I am not quite
certain that the death of my father and the howling of the dog took
place at the same moment. I do remember, however, that both incidents
occurred _about_ the same time, and I have a vague recollection of
having heard my grandmother say, that the unusual and peculiar howl
meant a death in the family. And when the news of my father’s decease
arrived she expressed her belief in the certain connection between the
two incidents.