My father's father, Isaac Tatum Hopper, was a Philadelphia Quaker, a rabid Abolitionist and conductor of the Philadelphia station of the Underground Railroad. Because of his participation in the Civil War the Friends churched him.
My father was so incensed at this action that he withdrew from the sect. My mother was a D'Wolf of Rhode Island. The D'Wolfs were High-Church Episcopalians, but they did not share that Church's usual tolerance of the stage.
Until their marriage my parents had never seen a play, but now they went almost constantly. They became passionately fond of the theater, the more so because of the interdiction of their youth.
My grandfather once said accusingly to my father, "John, I hear thee has been to see that player woman," meaning Laura Kean. "Is that true, John?"
"Yes, father, ninety-four times," my father responded.
For eleven years no child was born to my father and mother; then I, William D'Wolf Hopper, came, the only child. Doctors and biologists now put prenatal influence down as a superstition, I understand. It may be, but I
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