Rowson had
given her as a reward for good conduct, and a package of letters. She
spent an hour reading these, and old ties strengthened as she read. I can
see her now as she sat bolstered by pillows in her reclining chair, a
writing tray upon her knees, penning a long letter.
"A few months afterward, as I lay in my bed too weak even to stir, your
father stood there, looking across the footboard at me,--the answer to
that letter. Your father, tall and strong of body and brain, a Harvard
graduate drawn to New York to study medicine at the College of Physicians
and Surgeons. His eyes of strengthening manly pity looked into mine and
drew me slowly back to life with them.
"His long absence as surgeon in the Civil War, the settling down as a
country doctor, and even loving the same woman, has not separated us.
Never more than a few months passed but our thoughts met on paper, or our
hands clasped. His solicitude in a large measure restored my health, so
that at sixty-three, physically, I can hold my own with any man of my
age, and to-day I walk my ten miles with less ado than many younger men.
Because of my intense dislike of the modern means of street
transportation, I have kept on walking ever since the time that your
father and I footed it from Washington Park to Van Cortlandt Manor,
through the muskrat marshes whereon the park plaza now stands, up
through the wilds of the future Central Park, McGowan's Pass, and
northwestward across the Harlem to our destination.
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