Naturally, we who see
history made, are solicitous that it be accurately recorded, especially
when it vitally concerns those near to us.
[Illustration: Photograph by Lynwood Abbott. THE CROSS AT DONNER LAKE]
Shortly before school reopened, Georgia and I spent the day with cousin
Frances E. Bond; and in relating to her various incidents of our life,
we spoke of the embarrassment we had felt in class the day that Mr.
White asked every pupil whose ancestors had fought in the war of the
American Revolution to rise, and Georgia and I were the only ones who
remained seated. My cousin regarded us a moment and then said:
"Your Grandfather Eustis, although a widow's only son, and not yet
sixteen years of age, enlisted when the Revolutionary War began. He was
a sentinel at Old South Church, and finally, a prisoner aboard the
_Count d'Estang_."
She would have stopped there, but we begged for all she knew about our
mother's people, so she continued, mingling advice with information:
"I would rather that you should not know the difference between their
position in life and your own; yet, if you must know it, the Eustis and
the Wheelwright families, from whom you are descended, are among the
most substantial and influential of New England. Their reputation,
however, is not a prop for you to lean on. They are on the Atlantic
coast, you on the Pacific; so your future depends upon your own merit
and exertions.
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