part of the time a stagecoach ran from Lowell, through Tyngsboro, Pepperell, Townsend Harbor, Lunenburg and Fitchburg, and thence westward through Petersham and Belchertown to Springfield. The distance was about one hundred miles, and I was compelled to be ready to open the mail three mornings each week, at about two o'clock. The driver would sound his horn when he was eighty or one hundred rods away, and it was my duty to be ready to take the mail when the coach arrived at the door.

It was when so summoned that it was my fortune to see the shower of falling stars in November, 1833. From the time I arose until after daylight there was no part of the heavens that was not illuminated—not with one meteor merely—but with many hundreds. Many of them left a long train, extending through twenty, thirty, or even forty degrees. I called at Bard's window and told him that the stars were falling, but he refused to get up, thinking it a joke. The butcher of the town, Abijah Whitney, came out to commence preparations for his morning rounds, but conceiving that the day of judgment had come, he returned into the house and gave up business for the day. In the year 1901, I know of one other person only, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, who witnessed that exhibition, and it has not been repeated.

During my term with Mr. Heywood, and for many previous years, and for a short period afterwards, the business of printing standard books, Bibles, spelling-books and dictionaries had been carried on at Lunenburg by Col. Edmund Cushing. The books were bound, and then sent by teams to Boston. The printing was on hand-presses, and upon stereotype plates. Deacon William Harrington carried on a small business as a bookbinder, and Messrs. William Greenough & Sons erected a building on the farm now owned by Mr. Brown on the Lancaster road, and introduced the business of stereotyping—business then new, I think. These various industries gave employment of a large number of workmen, mostly young men. The establishment of Colonel Cushing was near the store of Heywood, and it was at the bindery that I first saw Alvah Crocker, afterwards known in the politics of the State, and as the projector of the Fitchburg railroad. He was a maker of paper at Fitchburg, and he came with a one-horse wagon to Cushing's place and carried away the paper shavings produced in the bindery. Crocker was a lean and awkward man, remarkable for his voice, which could be heard over the larger part of the village. When in after years we were associated in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and boarded at the same hotel, the Hanover House, I was compelled to hear the same voice in constant advocacy of the Fitchburg railroad project.

Colonel Cushing was one of the foremost men in town, but his aristocratic ways made him unpopular, and therefore he failed to secure official recognition. He was the father of Luther S. Cushing, for many years clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, then reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court, afterwards a judge upon the bench of the Court of Common Pleas, and then the author of Cushing's Manual. Another of his sons, Edmund Cushing, Jr., was a member of the Supreme Court of the State of New Hampshire. Of his two other sons, one was a clergyman, and one a civil engineer. The sons were all my seniors, and my acquaintance with them was limited, but when I became a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, in January, 1842, Luther S. Cushing, then the clerk, came to me, and after some words of congratulation, gave me this advice: "Never champion any private scheme, unless the parties are your constituents." Good advice, which I followed in all my legislative experience.

During the four winters of my term with Mr. Heywood, I attended the school, studying the usual branches with something of algebra, geometry, and Latin grammar. It was during these years that the teacher, Mr. Kilburn, created such an interest in his plans that he obtained a contribution of twenty-four dollars with which he purchased a twelve-inch celestial and a twelve-inch terrestrial globe. Several pleasant evenings were devoted to a study of the heavens with the aid of the celestial globe. I attended usually, and thus I gained a partial knowledge of the constellations, and an acquaintance with some of the stars by name and location. The post-office gave me access to several publications of the day, and in one or two instances I obtained a few subscribers to journals, and thus secured a free copy for myself. The Penny Magazine I obtained in that way for two years. In the cholera seasons of 1832-3 and 1834, the people were so alarmed that they hesitated to take letters and papers from the post-office. For a time gum-camphor was thought to be a preventive against the contagion.

Between 1830 and 1834 the ambition of the town was stimulated by the building of a new road from Fitchburg to Shirley. It was claimed that a shorter and more nearly level route to Boston from Fitchburg and the country above was thus secured. For a time the travel was considerable, but the teamsters preferred the old roads, the old taverns, and the old acquaintances. The construction of the Fitchburg railroad in 1844 ended the business from the country to Boston over the old highways.

In the month of November, 1834, I had a call from Mr. Joseph Hazen, of Shirley, who asked me to accept the post of teacher in the school at Pound Hill, half-way between Shirley Village and Shirley Centre. The pay was sixteen dollars per month in addition to board. After making an arrangement with Mr. Heywood, by which I was to pay him eight dollars for the twenty-six days in December, I accepted the invitation, and after an examination conducted by the Rev. Seth Chandler and the Rev. Hope Brown, I entered the school the first Monday of the month of December.

In the preceding June I had received my freedom suit of clothes—blue coat, bright buttons, black trousers, and buff vest. They were made by Daniel Cross, of Fitchburg, and, when in 1884, I visited that town, and found him still engaged in the business, I ordered a dress suit from his hand.

III CHANGES AND PROGRESS

As I pass in this record from my childhood and early youth to the responsibilities of life, I am led to some reflections upon the changes in opinions and the changes in the condition of the people in the more than half-century from 1835 to 1899. At the first period there was not a clergyman of any of the Protestant denominations who questioned the plenary and verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, including the Old and New Testaments. The suggestion could not have safely been made in any New England pulpit that there were errors of translation, and yet the Christian world, outside the Catholic Church, now accepts a revision that changes the meaning of some passages and excludes others as interpolations. The account given in the first chapter of Genesis of the creation of the world and of man was accepted according to the meaning of the language used. At the present moment there is not a well-educated clergyman of any denomination who would not either treat the account as a legend, or else explain the days as periods of indefinite duration.

The claim of the verbal and plenary inspiration of the Old Testament is denied by many and doubted by others, and the volume is seen and treated by them as a compilation of works or books in which are recorded the thoughts and doings of men and tribes and nations that existed at different periods and flourished or suffered as is the fortune of mankind.

The early chapters of Genesis were then a faithful history; they are now a legend. The Book of Job was then an inspiration; it is now a poem. The reported interviews between Abraham and Jehovah were then thought to have been real; now they are treated as the visions of an