famous than his native town : Mrs. Stanton has lived to
see her historic birthplace shrink into a mere local repute,
while she herself has been quoted, ridiculed, and abused into
a national fame.
But Johnstown still retains one of its ancient splendors, — a gloiy still as fresh as at the foundation of the world. Stand- ing on its hills, one looks off upon a comitry of enamelled meadow lands, that melt away southward toward the Mohawk, and northward to the base of those g^and mountains which are God's monument over the grave of John Brown. In * sight of six different counties in clear weather, Elizabeth Cady, a child of free winds and flowing brooks, roamed at will, frolicking with lambs, chasing butterflies, or, like Proserpine, gathering flowers, "herself a fairer flower." As Hanson Cox, standing under the pine tree at Dartmouth College, and gazing upon the outljnng landscape, exclaimed,
- This is a liberal education I " so Elizabeth Cady , in addition
to her books, her globes, her water-colors, and her guitar, was an apt pupil to skies and fields, gardens and mead- ows, flocks and herds. Happy the child whose foster-parents are God and Nature!
The one person who, more than any other, gave an intellect- ual bent to her early life, even more than her father and mother, was her minister. This was the Rev. Simon Hosack, — a good old Scotchman, pastor for forty years of a Presbyterian church in which the Cady family had always been members, and of which Mrs. Stanton (though she has long resided else- where) is a member to this very day; — a fact which her present biographer takes special pains to chronicle, lest, other- wise, the world might be slow to believe that this brilliant, audacious, and iconoclastic woman is actually an Old School Presbyterian. The venerable Scotch parson — snowy-haired, heavy-browed, and bony-cheeked — was generally cold to most of his parishioners, but always cordial to Elizabeth. A great
