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It was always hard to think of my forebears as people with thoughts and desires like my own. Even the pictures in the family albums—and there were a number of those albums, fastened with heavy brass catches, placed upon the third shelf of the whatnot in the small parlor at Wickford Point—even those pictures were unreal. The subjects sat in constricted positions, staring at nothing with cold grimaces that did not indicate either ease or pleasure. Some of the likenesses were tintypes and others were the faded brown of my father's well-colored meerschaum pipe.

My father and my cousin Hugh used to smoke those pipes very carefully in the harness room in the barn; Aunt Sarah, who had been sensitive about her mother's smoking, disliked the odor of tobacco in the house. My grandfather was the only one who was allowed to smoke without protest. He smoked three cigars a day from a private stock which had been given him by Mr. Vanderbilt in New York, and after each cigar Aunt Sarah opened all the windows and dusted off the curtains.