she was completely prostrated as it was. Doctor Eugene Chapman, a brother to my particular chum, I. W. Chapman, was our physician, and he was faithful even to coming the distance on foot on at least one occasion when the snow-drifts were so great that no horse could make the trip. With neighborly assistance we pulled through the sickness without the loss of any member of the family, but without their aid it is doubtful what the issue might have been.

My parents and brother George and sister Clara moved from Henderson, New York, in 1870, and located at Floyd, Floyd county, Iowa, where Father bought a farm not far from town, but soon moved to town and rented the farm. He was engaged in merchandising for some time in Floyd, and was a Justice of the Peace there for several years.

Father was a stockily built man, and was able, when in his prime, to do a full day's work with any company, having cut five acres of heavy grass in a day, using an "Armstrong" reaper-a hand-scythe and snath. The nearest the writer ever came to doing an equal task was when he mowed five acres of rather light barley in one day. After that day's work the boy had a pretty good opinion of his father's ability as a hay-maker.

He was extremely punctual and exact to all of his appointments and engagements, even in attending to his meals, so much so that one of his good neighbor ladies said she could safely set her clock by Mr. Seaton when he went to his dinner. And what is perhaps more strange, his favorite cat would almost invariably meet him at about a certain place on the sidewalk and accompany him the rest of the way home at meal-times.

Father was an Ensign in the New York State Militia, but he never was required to leave the State to take an active part in the war, though he had one son and four brothers engaged on the side of the Union in the War of the Rebellion of 1861-5.

In the diary that has been mentioned I notice that Father belonged to a temperance society, probably the Good Templars, and mention is frequently made of his attending lodge during the winter. The fact is also mentioned that he was loaning money quite often about 1866-7-8.

Laura Ann (Ferguson) Seaton, my mother, was born near Watertown, New York, on the Ferguson homestead, July 11, 1822, died at Floyd, Iowa, March 29, 1887, and was buried in the cemetery there, where a fine marble monument marks her last resting-place. I have in my possession a document from the War Department at Washington, D. C., saying that William Ferguson, Mother's grandfather, served in the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment in the Revolutionary War.

Also, that John Ferguson, her father, was a sergeant in the

Seventy-sixth Regiment of the New York Militia, War of 1812, and received a land warrant for one hundred and sixty acres of land for the service.

I have often been told that my mother was a beautiful lady, which exactly agrees with my estimate of female loveliness. I can add that she was a consistent Christian and a regular attendant at the Methodist Episcopal Church when I lived at home. I have often written of Mother in both prose and verse, and always to speak in her praise. She was my ideal of a lovely woman, possessing all of the virtues and none of the vices of womankind.

On the 27th of July, 1887, Father was married to Minerva J. Carpenter, at Waterloo Iowa, by the Reverend J. O. Stephenson. Mrs. Carpenter was a fine-looking and wealthy widow and an old acquaintance of the family, and, if she could add any happiness to Father's old age, I would be the last to object to such a marriage. Andrew Pennell Seaton died at the residence of Brother George F. Seaton, at Floyd, Iowa, February 22, 1897, and was buried beside my Mother.