Some Memories of a Long Life, 1854–1911

One day during the late summer of 1853 in Evansville, Indiana, a small but growing town in the Southwestern part of the State—a young girl of fifteen, suffering from some slight affection of the eyes, had been confined by the physician’s orders to a darkened room. Happening at the moment to peep through a narrow crack of the almost closed window-shutters she saw a young man passing by. As she had lived all her life in that small town and was familiar with almost every face in it, she knew at once that he was a stranger.