CHAPTER III.
Mr. Carter’s eldest child was born March 29, 1836, and was named for his grandfather, Samuel Thomson. He was a child of great promise, docile and lovable in an unusual degree. He had a quick and thoughtful mind, with a ready memory, which stored up a large number of psalms and hymns, and other bits of poetry. His parents afterwards felt that his mind had been stimulated too much, but it was such a pleasure to teach the bright precocious little fellow that it was hard to resist the temptation to give him the information he so eagerly sought. He lived not quite four years, but there are many still on earth who cherish lovingly the memory of the bright little boy who went to heaven more than fifty years ago. The thought of him was always a power in the family, and he seemed like a real living presence to the younger brothers and sister, most of whom had never seen him, and the tradition of him has been handed down to the next generation, who think tenderly of the little Uncle Samuel, who died before their parents were born. Even that little child, though dead half a century ago, still speaketh. Forty-five years after his death, his mother told a friend that she did not think a Sunday had passed since he was taken from her that she had not repeated to herself all the ten psalms and hymns which he had learned and been accustomed to recite to her on Sundays. His father writes of him:―
