variety of clothing was much more expensive than it now is, unless shoes and hats are exceptions.

My father was the best farmer in the neighborhood. He had been employed in the nursery and vegetable gardening at Newton, and for five years he had had charge of the farm of Madam Coffin at Newton Corner, widow of the Hon. Peleg Coffin, who had been a member of Congress from Nantucket. In a few years we had a supply of cherries, peaches, and choice apples. As my father understood budding and grafting tress, his improved fruits were distributed to others. I acquired the art of budding when I could not have been more than ten years of age, and before I left home at the age of thirteen, I had practised the art in the village and on the trees of the neighbors.

Previous to 1830 the era of invention had not opened, and the articles by whose aid domestic comfort has been promoted were unknown. The only means of cooking were the open fire and the brick oven. Meat for roasting was suspended by a cord from a hook in the ceiling in front of the open fire and over a dripping pan. The children found amusement and became useful in twisting the cord and then allowing the weight of the meat to untwist it. Even fire in the summer was obtained and kept with difficulty. There were no friction matches and not infrequently a child was sent on a flying visit to a neighbor's house to borrow fire. Indeed, the habit of borrowing and lending extended to nearly every movable thing that any one possessed. Tools, food, especially fresh meat, the labor of men, oxen and horses were borrowed and lent. Farming tools were few in number and rude in construction. Many of them were made upon the farms, either by the farmers themselves, or by the help of poorly instructed mechanics. The modern plough was unknown. Hay and manure forks, scythes, hoes, were so rough, uncouth and heavy that they would now be rejected by the commonest laborer. As early as 1830 by father bought a cast-iron plough; it was the wonder of the neighborhood and the occasion of many prophecies that were to be falsified by events.

My father was a practical man and a gentleman by nature. With him civility was innate. He was a close observer and something of a philosopher. I recall his statement made in my childhood that matter was indestructible. He was of even temper, and of an imperturbable spirit. His paternal ancestor on this side of the Atlantic was made a freeman at Lynn in 1638. Of his arrival in the country there is no record. From that date there had been no marriage except into English families. My father was purely English. My mother, whose family name was Marshall, and who was a descendant of John Marshall who came in the Hopewell, Captain Babb, in 1635, was English also through all her ancestors from John Marshall.

My father enjoyed the respect and confidence of his fellow citizens and he held many of the offices of the town and for many years. In 1843 and 1844 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and in 1853 he was a member of the Constitutional Convention. I was also a member of the same bodies, and the association with my father under such peculiar circumstances is one of the pleasant recollections of my life.* My mother belonged to a family of unusual intellectual endowment, and of great rigidity of opinion. Her father, Jacob Marshall, was a student by tendency and habit, a stone mason and farmer by occupation, and the inventor of the press used for pressing hops and cotton in square bales. He lived to be more than eighty years of age, was twice married, and had a large family of children whom he educated and trained as well as children could be trained and educated at the close of the last century in a country town in northern Massachusetts.

For the last fifty years of his life he devoted himself to the study of the bible and such works of history as he could command. His knowledge of the bible was so great that he was an oracle in the town, although he departed from the popular faith and became a Universalist. He lived comfortably and without hard work, and in the later years of his life he became the owner of two farms in the northerly part of Lunenburg. As I recollect him and his farms he could not have been a good farmer. His crop was hops, and that crop always commanded money, at a time when it was unusual to realize money for farm produce.

As my father's house was a mile from the District School, and as there was a school within twenty or thirty rods of my grandfather's house, I was sent to my grandfather's for my first winter's schooling. I think it must have been the winter of 1823-4. The teacher was Ithamar Butters, called Dr. Butters from the circumstance that he had studied medicine for a time with Dr. Aaron Bard, a physician in the village. Of Dr. Butters as a teacher I remember little. He became a disbeliever in the Bible—an agnostic of those days. I recollect a remark of his made many years after: That he would prefer the worst hell to annihilation, which he believed would be his fate.

I learned to read by standing in front of my mother as she read the Bible. Of course all the letters were inverted, and the faculty of reading an inverted page, has remained.

I went to the District School summer and winter, until I was ten years of age, and to the winter school until I passed my seventeenth birthday, when my school life ended. My father and mother were scrupulous about my attendance, and I cannot recall that I was ever allowed to be absent during the school term either for work or pleasure.

When I reached the age of ten years I was kept on the farm during the summer months, until I left home in December, 1830. In those days farmers' boys did not enjoy the luxury of shoes in the summer, nor indeed in the autumn season. More than once I picked chestnuts bare- footed and often I have tended the oxen in the mowing field frosty mornings and warmed my feet by standing on a stone.

Once only during my home life did I go to Boston with my father. He carried poultry in a one-horse wagon. I accompanied him. The year may have been 1828, or '9 or '30. On our way he stopped at one of the Waltham cotton factories to see a niece of my father who was there at work. We lodged that night at the house of Madam Coffin. She was then already old in my sight. She seemed pleased with my father's visit, and the impression left upon my mind is that we were entertained with marked consideration. My father had managed her farm for about five years from 1809 to 1814, when he volunteered for service in the army, and for ninety days he was on the island then known as Fort Warren.

The next morning we reached Boston and stationed our wagon at the northwest corner of Quincy Market, where we sold our poultry. During the day my father had occasion to go to the store of Joseph Mead, at the corner of Lyman Place, and I was left in charge of the wagon. I had the fortune to sell some of the poultry. My father thought that the proceeds in money did not equal the decrease in stock, and so it proved—for the next Sunday morning when I dressed for meeting I found a two dollar bill in my trousers' pocket.

That night we spent with Captain Hyde, at Newton Corner. During the first year of my father's married life he had carried on a farm on the opposite side of the highway, and it was from Captain Hyde that he obtained his knowledge of budding and grafting, and some knowledge of the art of gardening. They always continued friends; Captain Hyde came to my father's, in after years, and supplied our farm with the best varieties of cherry, peach and apple trees.

The day following we went to Brighton where my father purchased the remnant of a drove of cattle that had been driven from the State of Maine—twenty-four in number. Of these nine were oxen and the rest were young