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[8] th sound, when my mother tried to teach me to call her by that name. ‘Muzzer, muzzer,’ was all that I could manage to say. But the dear parent presently said, ‘If you cannot do better than that, you will have to go back and call me mamma.’ The shame of going back moved me to one last effort, and, summoning my utmost strength of tongue, I succeeded in saying ‘mother,’ an achievement from which I was never obliged to recede.

A journey up the Hudson River was undertaken, when I was very young, for the bettering of my mother's health. An older sister of hers went with us, as well as a favorite waiting-woman, and a young physician whose care had saved my father's life a year or more before my own birth. After reaching Albany, we traveled in my father's carriage; the grown persons occupying the seats, and I sitting in my little chair at their feet. A book of short tales and poems was often resorted to for my amusement, and I still remember how the young doctor read to me, ‘Pity the sorrows of a poor old man,’ and how my tears came, and could not be hidden.

The sight of Niagara caused me much surprise. Playing on the piazza of the hotel, one day, with only the doctor for my companion, I ventured to ask him, ‘Who made that great hole where the water comes down?’ He replied, ‘The great ’

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