mor was a lawyer and founder of some fraternal society-
at one time prominent in Democratic National Politics and
temporary Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Ben was a newspaper man and died as City Editor (or some-
thing like that) of the old Chicago Inter-Ocean. Sam, my
father -- a congenital pioneer -- was, in my opinion, the greatest
man I ever knew.

It was pretty thin picking for that family without a father,
but Uncle John MacAloney served them well. He educated
Alexander at Rutgers and abroad and kept an eye on the rest.
He lived to such a ripe old age that at West Point in 1900 I
knew him as an immaculate, delicate, peppery old gentleman
who sometimes came up to West Point from New York to see
me on Saturdays and wrote me letters full of admonitions
backed by Old Testament texts of the harsher kind. He had a
house on 84th Street and one at Saratoga.

His family name had become (more euphoniously) MacAlan
many years before, but I own my grandmother's prayerbook
dated about 1820 and on the fly-leaf is inscribed in her charac-
teristic hand "Matilda MacAloney, Pew 27."

Uncle John's pleasure in his visits to West Point was obscured
by the annoyance of encountering a rather fine old soldier, a
pre-war graduate of West Point and ex-confederate colonel,
who lived near by. They had been David and Jonathan before
the Civil War and had married Florida girls who were sisters
or cousins. The old Colonel, a federal army officer -- according
to Uncle John -- not only was persuaded by his wife into the
Confederacy but, before disclosing this to the Federal Govern-
ment, permitted himself to be detailed by it to a European mis-
sion, resigned abroad, and then participated in negotiations
for the commerce raiders, the Alabama and the Florida, or some
other Confederate mission. At least that was Uncle John's
story. To him it was nefarious treason and his carefully scissored
white beard used to quiver at so much as the mention of his old
friend's name. Once they encountered on a West Point road and
circled like two venerable game-cocks to keep the whole width
of the highway between them -- their trouble had happened
forty years before!

Uncle John had no direct heirs and I think I might have been
better off if I hadn't squandered my furlough money in New
York and had to telegraph him at Saratoga -- twice -- for car-

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