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17 what would have been the result- on our family if my Mother's desire had prevailed and I cannot but conclude that it would have been for good. In those days, the late fifties and early sixties, the fashionable hotel in New York was the old Astor House with Barnum's museum opposite. In my scrap book I have now a little drawing of the spire of St John's church as seen from the window of our room in the Astor House. I wish that my own pupils would draw with the painstaking care I find in this little pencil sketch and I could not have been more than twelve if that. The Civil War was at this time casting its pall over the entire country. My Uncle and cousins had gone to the front and we had difficulty