more Bells at the fall of Richmond than any man in the United States, which they was all purchased with one man’s money—7 was the number, 4 large ones & 3 small ones—it is true I was a little opposed to the War—but no matter. The Brick Church and the Buildings I built for the —— Institute now with Interest cost me now over $43.000. They are all Paid for and I am out of Debt. I have furnished every stick of wood for the Church, and have carried the most of it in since it was built. I still wring the Bells on all occasions.” etc. etc.

There is, perhaps, a touch of the garrulity of age in this good man’s recital; but I consider his record of his early life, slight as it is, yet too strikingly suggestive to 44 be left to chances which might await a private letter. Indeed, the character thus displayed is surely equal to that of the best of the old Romans, in the middling class of life, enlightened too by a living faith of which they had no conception; and the sketch gives fair warrant for the conclusion, that, in point of manly simplicity and integrity, the traits and the trials of those elder worthies who helped to settle our republican institutions have not been overdrawn.