My father , Malcolm Johnston, was fond of talking with his children about the antecedents of his family. Since his death I have often regretted that I did not listen with more attentiveness. On his father's side he could not go farther back than to his grandfather, Rev. Thomas Johnston, who, early in the last century, emigrating from Scotland, came first to the State of Pennsylvania - what county I can not now say. He had already taken orders in the English Church. Some time after his coming he intermarried with Sallie Adamson, who came of the family of a gentleman who afterwards was well known in the early history of Charlotte County, Virginia, Colonel Thomas Bouldin. In this journeying southward he at first went no farther than Prince George County, Maryland, and for some years was rector of a parish therein. Subsequently Colonel Bouldin after becoming settled in Virginia, removed him thither, where he was settled on a piece of ground named “The Glebe,” in the parish of Cornwall, County of Charlotte. Among his children the eldest was William, who, after serving in the War of Independence, at its end removed, with his family, in the year 1799, to Hancock County, Georgia, settling on a plantation four miles west of the village of Powelton. My father, Malcolm, who was the younger of the two sons of their parents, was then eleven years old, having been born in Charlotte County in 1788.

William Johnston's wife was Rebecca Mosely, whose mother was Amy Goode, whose mother was Amy Greene, all of Charlotte County.

My mother was Catherine Davenport. Her father, John Davenport (whose mother was a Hancock), was killed at the battle of Guilford Court House. One of his ancesters, on immigrating to this country, settled in Connecticut. Whether or not he was the same who founded the city of New Haven I know not. He resided in, and probably was a native of, the same county of Charlotte, wherein he intermarried with Lucy Barksdale. Some years after the death of my maternal grandfather his widow was married to Henry Burnley, who, in the year 1789, removed to the County of Warren, on the border of Hancock, State of Georgia.

As it seems to me now, my childhood was unmixedly happy in spite of my being throughout of weakly health of body, and so continued until I was fifteen years old. The living at our house was mingled of strictest discipline with affectionateness to whose tenderness there seemed to be no bounds. We children were an ardent set, and our parents punished our oft offendings with switches pulled from the peach tree. But afterwards we were not subjected to everlasting talkings about it. Instead, a reasonably healthy flagellation satisfied every demand, and we began with restored love and confidence upon a new career. Like other children who are not strong enough to be much out of doors, and who must be occupied with something within, I learned early to read. I have no recollection of a time, except one, when I could not read, and I remember how my father was chagrined in that case. It was with me then as it has been ever since - to apprehend quickly and as quickly forget. One day a gentleman visiting at our house noticing me upon the floor interested about some trifle, made some remark. My father said with some pride that I knew how to read, and forthwith he took from a table near by a copy of Mercer's Cluster, the hymn book then used by the Baptists, called me, lifted me upon his lap, and opening somewhere confidently bade me proceed. I looked on the page and thought how singular that I should have forgotten every blessed thing the familiarity with which had been making the whole family so proud. But I had forgotten the art. So I looked up to my father in vague shame and sympathy. After some vain remonstrances he let me go down, I don't remember if the guest laughed. I was then somewhere between three and four.

I can just remember that my father during these times was an active, ardent, rather gay man in spite of his weight of two hundred and fifty pounds, and that my mother, somewhat his senior, had a quietness which tended more and more toward melancholy. He was a leader in neighborhood parties whereat indulgence in dancing was not forbidden too strictly. He was fond of fox hunting, and being one of the five freeholder judges of the county court, he not seldom, when its session was over, lingered at Sparta, the county seat, and for a day or two and as many nights played poker with other friends of that game. Afterwards, and when he become a clergyman, in referring to these games he used to say with pardonable pride that he came off winner more often than loser.

When he was about five and thirty he felt as if he ought to change the manner of his life. There was no Episcopal church near by, so he joined the denomination of his mother, the Baptist. Not long afterwards Jesse Mercer, the head Baptist in Georgia, one of the wisest men whom the South has produced, prevailed upon him to become a clergyman. He had had an education much more limited than that of his father, but on a line with that of some of the leading men of the State. And so he set forth. Some persons who used to hear him preach have told me that he was uncommonly succinct, sometimes almost eloquent in delivery of his views, and (what in those days was as delightful as rare) he used to stop when he was through with what he had to say. I remember to have heard him preach once or twice, and that he seemed to be rather embarrassed, even when giving expression to strongest denominational opinions. He was an ardent partisan as well in religion as in politics. I heard him say once that for all his preachings during twenty years he had not been paid as much as twenty-five dollars in money. Indeed, many of the Baptist divines in those days had more worldly goods than a large majority of their congregations, and so they were in condition to avail themselves of that higher beatitude - giving, instead of receiving. The policy of Jesse Mercer was to make preachers of leading planters. It was wise; it led to the bringing into the Baptist Church of probably three-fourths of the land-owners and negro-owners of Middle Georgia.

My father's conversion, as they used to call it, was followed by quick changes. He gave up dancing and card-playing. Before that he used to make a bowl of toddy of mornings before breakfast, have it graced by the touch of my mother's lips, modestly sipped by us children, then drained by himself. All these were stopped at once. He used to be what they called a bright Mason, once presiding, in the absence of the Master, over the Grand Lodge of the State. But his denomination being hostile to that institution, although he ever spoke of it with respect and some fondness, he never again met his brothers of the mystic tie.

Our life at home was ordered by rules which to our parents seemed the very best to employ. The strictest obedience was required, and its violations were met with quick punishment. Even delegated authority was rigidly ratified there. Punishments at school were not reported, as we foresaw that they were most likely to be approved without enquiries as to the merit of their infliction. When night came a chapter was read, a hymn sung, a prayer said, and by nine o'clock everybody was in bed and soon afterwards asleep. The next morning's newly risen sun would find all, old and young, awake and preparing for the work of the new day. I look back with much fondness to those evening orisons. Both of my parents sang well, and some of the old hymns were ineffably sweet. Yet, somehow, my recollections of the Sundays, except one, were always rather sad. The great monthly meeting day was grand. We two youngest children, my sister Eliza and I, rode to church with my mother in the gig, drawn by Bob, the best of sorrels. The rest of the day, after returning home, was cheerful, barring the long time we had to wait after the first table of invited guests to dinner were served. But the other Sundays seemed gloomy. The children were not allowed to go off the premises, or even to play, such was the idea of observance of the Sabbath. My mother all day long read the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress, and my father, naturally a cheerful man, meditated in harmony with the thoughts of this strange book. Yet Monday morning lifted the sombre veil and all went cheerfully enough to their accustomed employment.

When I was five years old I was sent to school along with my older brother, Mark. The teacher was a man named Hogg. I can recall but one single incident occurring at this school, which was kept in a small log house in an old field near the line of the farms of two of our neighbors, Mr. Edmund Randle and Mr. Hamilton Bonner. The teacher kept a large red book like a merchant's ledger, in which he was fond of drawing with a pen sketches of men, horses and other things. One day, going to him to ask something about my lesson, I inadvertently struck his elbow while in the midst of some essay of his art, and this incensed him to the degree that he gave me a box upon my cheek, and sent me away no wiser than when I came to him. He was succeeded by a man named Josiah Yellowby, whom and his wife Delilah I recalled while writing my story of How Mr. Bill Williams Took the Responsibility. Little do I remember of the times I had then except the last day. The boys had been asking, and in vain, for a holiday. One morning they met the teacher at the school-house door, where the request was again made, and on his continued refusal they seized and carried him to the spring branch. Persisting in the refusal of their demands, four of the largest, taking him by the hands and feet, let him down into the stream. The water had reached to his chin, when he gave up. Then he dismissed the school (for it was near the end of the term), went away from the neighborhood, and I never saw him again. His little dog Rum and his wife's mare Kate were as I have described them in my story, although what was told of the wife, a homely female, was pure invention.

My next teacher was James Hilsman, son of one of the neighbors. He kept school at a cross-roads near his father's residence, which was nearly two miles from our house. This man was afterwards suspected of having been rather insane always. He delighted in punishing. I think I must have gotten an average of at least one whipping a day, though I was less than seven years old. He was not as fierce as Israel Meadows, whom I have described in The Goose Pond School, yet I remember that he had the circus and the horses. In the latter I used to alternate in the riding and carrying with a boy named Buck Connell. The teacher bore with special heaviness upon his younger brothers. I think. he must have intended to make such treatment pass for evidence that he was impartial in his discipline. At all events, no complaint was made of it, many parents in those days seeming to believe that education could not be imparted so well in any other wise as by application of the rod. This poor man was afterwards killed by his son-in-law, whom he was pursuing and was about to shoot after a runaway marriage with one of his daughters.

After him a man named Barnes Sims taught in a house that used to be occupied by Mr. William Long, from whom upon his removal to Troup County my father purchased it with the plantation. I remember little of this school, beyond the fact that some of the larger boys established in a room of the second story what they called a “Freemason's Lodge,” and that I and several others about my capacity were initiated with ceremonies that for a long time afterwards I could not recall without some resentment. The teacher was a kind man, too kind, I suspect, for his vocation, which he soon after relinquished. Very often I recall a prayer that I made one day while standing alone by the spring at the foot of the hill. My oldest brother, Albon, just come to his one-and-twentieth year, had died that fall from sickness contracted while waiting on a sick child of Colonel Farmin, one of our neighbors. This affliction bore with great heaviness upon my parents. On this occasion while thinking of my brother, partly for my own sense of his loss, but mainly for sympathy with the grief of others, I prayed that when I went home in the evening I might find him returned to life, and I indulged a strong hope that so it would be. My disappointment was very sorrowful and humiliating, but I spoke not of it to any one. Some time afterwards my mother, taking with her my next older brother, Mark, and sister EIiza, went for a visit of a day and night to my sister Sarah Ann, who was lately married and living near the town of Crawfordville, ten miles away. At night after supper my father and I were on the piazza, he sitting on a chair and I on the top step. We had endured the absence well enough during the day, but now he lapsed into a silence and I knew he was thinking of the dead as of the absent. He sat and picked the seed from a parcel of cotton on his lap, a thing often done at night by men in our neighborhood, partly from habit before the invention of the gin, partly for entertainment, and partly because a softer staple than that gotten by the gin was obtained for thread in the knitting of stockings. For some time I sought to entertain him, but when he only answered briefly what I asked and narrated, I became silent and sad also. It was the first wave of melancholy that had come over my spirit. I listened to the katydids, and thought of how brother Albon used to hear them, but not now. Then I thought that the time would come when like him my mother and father would depart forever out of my sight. Indulgence of the feeling was no doubt brief, but I remember it well, and that my heart was full of that sort of sadness of which we never can speak, never can feel like speaking to another. Since then the fondest to me of all night sounds has been what always seems the wailing of the katydid.