Memoirs of John Adams Dix; comp. by his son, Morgan Dix.

86

MEMOIRS OF 0JOHN ADAMS DIX.

had come across the Alps, that he replied, " Well, I guess we
did come over risin,' grouind."
The winters were terrible for their length, and for the
weary hiding of the earth under the snow; not so hard, however, as those in his -native New England, where sometimes
the ground would crack open with a loud report under the
effect of the frost. There was one long, long winter, when,
from November until April, they never once saw the ground;
and my mother knelt down and kissed the first bright blade
of grass in the spring.x'
I have old letters, good store, which passed between Apple
Hill and No. 14 Bond Street, the country and the town homes.
They tell of the changes of the seasons, the hard winters, the
hopeful spring-tides, and the mellow autumn days. In the
summer all were together. My father threw himself with his
characteristic ardor into the pursuits of rural life, declining
no responsibility of a householder. Writing to his wife, in
New York, on the 30th of April, 1829, he says:
"It will be three weeks since we parted, and I verily believe it is the longest period of bachelorhood I have known
these three years. At all events it has been a most dreadfully
solitary and gloomy one. We are very busy; but, unluckily,
our minds are not as attentive as our hands to the matters in
operation. Mine is constantly stealing over the Vision,t
thence to the Hudson; and down its waters, you know, the
transition is an easy one to the city and Bond Street. To* Referring to those New England winters, my father told me how,
when a little fellow, he came back to his mother, who had seen him off
to school, and solemnly told her that there was a crack in the ground
too wide for him to cross. He was an imaginative child-one of those
whose fancy evolves wonders from its laboratory. He would gravely tell
of things which could not have taken place-of having beheld creatures
flying which cannot fly, and of encounters with unknown and terrific
beasts. It was the play of the imagination; for otherwise the lad was
the soul of truth and honor, as the man was to the very end.
t The name of a mountain in the vicinity.