"She could do more
different things," says the author, "and finish them all in a
greater degree of perfection than any other woman I have ever
known. If I were limited to one adjective in describing her,
`capable' would be the word."
The author's father was descended from a long line of ancestors of
British blood. he was named for, and traced his origin to, that
first Mark Stratton who lived in New York, married the famous
beauty, Anne Hutchinson, and settled on Stratton Island, afterward
corrupted to Staten, according to family tradition. From that point
back for generations across the sea he followed his line to the
family of Strattons of which the Earl of Northbrooke is the present
head. To his British traditions and the customs of his family, Mark
Stratton clung with rigid tenacity, never swerving from his course
a particle under the influence of environment or association. All
his ideas were clear-cut; no man could influence him against his
better judgment. He believed in God, in courtesy, in honour, and
cleanliness, in beauty, and in education. He used to say that he
would rather see a child of his the author of a book of which he
could be proud, than on the throne of England, which was the
strongest way he knew to express himself. His very first earnings
he spent for a book; when other men rested, he read; all his life
he was a student of extraordinarily tenacious memory. He especially
loved history: Rollands, Wilson's Outlines, Hume, Macauley,
Gibbon, Prescott, and Bancroft, he could quote from all of them
paragraphs at a time contrasting the views of different writers on
a given event, and remembering dates with unfailing accuracy.
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