She ate two of her meals at the same time as the rest of the family, having a table to herself, and I alone had a place at it, generally sitting on the elbow of her arm-chair. She also taught me fully to understand her politics, which, so far as I could understand them, were that there ought not be any kings, princes, barons, nobles, or knights. She never said anything against aristocrats, and my memory of her now is that if ever there was a high-priestess of the aristocracy, she was one, and especially did she dilate upon the fact that her family, the Cilleys, was the best in the State.
Can anyone doubt where I learned my political status: democratic politics in government and personal aristocracy?
I give these details, although they may seem puerile. In time, they had great effect upon the bent of my mind, though not much then, because the most of what was said I did not understand. But I remembered it all, and it came up to meet every emergency of thought later on. Hence my democracy; for hers was the only political teaching I ever had until I learned political economy from the books, and that was no teaching at all.
My grandmother died at the age of eighty-four. A severe cold brought her life to an end, when her physical and mental strength were apparently as good as ever. Her sister, Alice Cilley, married Captain Page and went to Maine, first settling in Hallowell, and afterwards living in Cornville with one of her children. I never saw her until after I went to college in Maine, and I may possibly have occasion to refer to her hereafter. She died in 1849, at the age of ninety-nine and a half years, and was able, the summer before she died, to mount her own horse without assistance, and ride out some three miles to visit a neighbor.
I attended a partially private school or academy at Deerfield until I was eight years old. In this school almost every branch of practical learning was taught except the languages. There were many young men in the school, and some young women. My teacher was Mr. James Hersey, afterwards postmaster of Manchester, New Hampshire, a city which had no existence in those days. His specialty was English grammar,--at least he made it so with his pupils,--and he was the most intelligent teacher of the English
