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. "He could repeat the entire Bible," says Mrs.
Stratton-Porter, "giving chapters and verses, save the books of
Generations; these he said `were a waste of gray matter to
learn.' I never knew him to fail in telling where any verse
quoted to him was to be found in the Bible." And she adds: "I was
almost afraid to make these statements, although there are many
living who can corroborate them, until John Muir published the
story of his boyhood days, and in it I found the history of such
rearing as was my father's, told of as the customary thing among
the children of Muir's time; and I have referred many inquirers
as to whether this feat were possible, to the Muir book.
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