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and undoubtedly his grandmother as well, for she was alive at that time.
    I’m sure they didn’t ride in a sleeping car—it would have cost too much. And that they brought something to stay their hunger: thick meat sandwiches. Pickles. Pie. And cake. And that my father had a great deal to say, for he was the youngest and it was the first time in his life that he had enjoyed his father’s undivided attention all through a day and a night. Perhaps he was lucky and had a whole seat to stretch out on, facing the one where my grandfather sat, bolt upright, in the dimly lighted coach. If the train was crowded, he slept with his head in his father’s lap. And woke in the night at mysterious wayside stations, and saw greenish-white lights, and heard voices and mysterious clanking sounds, and asked still another question about what it was like in Ohio, and fell back into sleep the moment the wheels began to turn.
    In the morning they got off the train and walked directly across the street to the hotel. And in the hotel lobby my grandfather put the satchel down and told my father to stand right there and keep an eye on it, while he went to the desk. It was a big dark room, with a high ceiling and lots ofpolished brass, and potted palms, and marble statues, and numerous cuspidors, and my father had never seen anything like it. He was busy taking it all in, when suddenly he heard his name being called. A big boy in a uniform with his hair slicked down was going through the lobby calling his name. My father went up to him and said, “I’m William Keepers Maxwell,” and a tall, lean, broad-shouldered man with a mustache, who had turned up at the same instant, said, “
I’m
William Keepers Maxwell.” Then, looking down at my father, “Why, you must be Creight’s boy!” The pleasure was mutual and lasting.
    Judging by Jemima Keepers’ portrait, my father got not only her last name but also her nose, and my daughter Kate got her forehead. And nobody that I know inherited her high cheekbones and beautifully sculptured upper eyelids. She is wearing a velvet dress with a lace collar, and she seems to have forgotten that she is sitting for her portrait. This air of melancholy preoccupation may be only that she carried a burden of sadness that was habitual and lasting and showed even when she was attending to other matters. She did not have an easy life.
    The portrait of my great-grandfather is of a much younger man, with thick dark hair and eyebrows, widely spaced eyes, and a square jaw. It has been so retouched that it looks like a photograph of a drawing by a not very accomplished amateur, and that may be what it is. His clothes are much more simply cut than his father’s. He looks forthright and honest and unreal. He was a marble engraver, which I take to mean that he carved inscriptions on tombstones. My great-grandparents moved from Stillwater, Ohio, to Uhrichsville about 1840, and fourteen years later they moved to Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, where, that same year, my great-grandfather died, very suddenly, at the age of forty-two. His nuncupative will reads: “On the morning of the 14th day of September A.D. 1854, Robert Maxwell called upon us theundersigned in his dwelling house in the Borough of Waynesburg Greene County Penn in the last extremity of his last illness, to notice the following disposition of his property, to wit. William A. Porter Esqu. asked him if he was aware of the fact that he was soon going to die? The Testator answered, that he was. Mr. Porter then asked him what request he had to make?—he said, first he wished all his just debts to be paid out of his estate. Second he wished his wife Jemima to have all the residue of his Estate both real and personal—he said that there was a judgment in the state of Ohio in his favor, which he wished his wife to have also, he said he would like to make some other arrangements but could not talk and called upon us to take particular notice that this was his wish and