SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF HISTORIC TRAVEL Read at the fourth annual meeting of the Ohio Archæological and Historical Society, at Chillicothe, February 1, 1889. I propose this evening to give you some reminiscences of my travels in search of history over the four States of New York, New Jersey, Virginia and Ohio, from 1840 to 1847. They will consist largely of recollections of men of mark that I met. To render them more valuable I will present some facts of my early days, and show how I was lead into a pursuit so out of the ordinary course. I was born in a State that is more indebted to Ohio than any other Connecticut. Its people early in this century, say about 1820, were noted as the best educated in the Union. When I was a boy I never knew a native who could not read and write, and so homogeneous was our population that my native city, New Haven, with 7,000 people, had not a dozen families foreign born. Connecticut was the first to establish public schools, which she did by the large school fund derived from the sale of her Ohio lands, comprising the twelve lake counties known as the Connecticut reserve. It was therefore proper that a Connecticut man should try to do a good thing for Ohio. It was just after the close of the last war with the British that I put in an appearance. This was in the fall of the cold summer of 1816, when there was a frost every month of the year. Nothing could be expected to start big. I was not an exception. A rustic coming in and seeing me, but a three pounder, carried around on a pillow, exclaimed in the dialect of the rural regions, "Dew tell! what a leetel fellow! he's scurcely wuth the raisin." Religion, patriotism and learning had full possession of our place. It was the seat of Yale college, where even the old bricks seemed to ooze knowledge. My father was the college bookseller. His was then the most famous bookstore in New England, and the gathering point for scholarly men from far and wide. Thus was I in my boy days brought in the presence of much learning. It stared at me in rows from the shelves; a back stare it was. It walked in the front door personified singly or in twos; bowed and blandly said "Good morning." Polite learning that, often old fashioned, attired in short breeches, buckle shoes and broad brimmed hat. The Bookstore was a great educating spot for me. In winter, gentlemen of literary and social propensities from afar and near, would often sit around the wood stove, and under the genial influence of a good fire, talk down the hours. It was not all solemnity around that stove. I remember in my boyhood days of tumbling from chairs in convulsions of laughter at droll stories I heard. But then I got up again, and made full compensation by a tearful indulgence through some subsequent sorrow: "The heart that thrills to sweetest pleasure This much listening developed in me an overweaning love of humor, and that has often prevented me from being sad. even where a solemn sense of duty told me I ought to be very much cast down, there being at times with us all a natural de mand for lugubriousness. Else why should we be provided with such convenient muscular arrangements for drawing down the corners of our mouths and shedding tears? In those charming days of youthful romance and young life's dreams, I derived untold benefit from my brother, some five years older than myself, who could sketch from nature, a rare accomplishment with American youth of that day. He often took me on his sketching and fishing jaunts, and taught my boy eyes to derive pleasure from the ever-changing beauties of the woods and waters, the clouds and mountains, of the surpassingly picturesque country around my native town. And thus this love of nature and love of humor, has smoothed my solitary tramps through succesive years over varied States, for my eyes were continually pleased with the attractions of our earthly dwelling place, and my love of humor and sociality opened the hearts of strangers with whom I was in daily contact; and so I was never lonely, and never sad, and everywhere was received with kindness. Among the habitues of my father's bookstore were college professors, eminent lawyers, and judges, and country parsons; some of the latter splendid specimens of virtuous, grand old age, fathers in Israel, settled for life, who ministered to their people in joy and in sorrow, from the cradle to the grave. There in my boy days, I often saw and listened to the conversation. of such men as Noah Webster, Benjamin Silliman, Jeremiah Day, James L. Kingsley, Roger M. Sherman, Eli Ives, Nathaniel W. Taylor, etc., and that strange, unearthly, spiritual being, the poet Percival. Men of such intellectual mark, united to moral worth, as I then used to see, I have since rarely met. Simple, dignified manners, cautious in statement, and absence of expletives, and of cant expressions, were prominent characteristics. In 1828 was issued the first edition of Webster's Dictionary, now a power in our land, and in two quarto volumes. The imprint of my father was on the title page; he printed it in an office, at the time owned by him. I, as a boy, often carried proofs to Mr. Webster's residence. Mr. Webster was then just seventy years of age, and I was impressed by the calm grandeur of his person, and the atmosphere of moral purity that seemed to envelop him. He was eminently religious, and of a nature ever ready to shudder at a scene of woe, or shrink from a thought of wrong. I do not remember to have seen him smile, he was a too much pre-occupied man for frivolity, bearing as he did the entire weight of the English tongue upon his shoulders. The most constant visitor of the bookstore was that strange, unearthly being, the poet Percival; and I cannot but regard it as having been a privilege to have known him and heard him converse. He was then considered as possessing more general learning than any other man on the globe, unless it was Humboldt. We are certain this continent never had his equal. Everything, home, family, friends, was sacrificed to his love of knowledge, which it has been said, was so intense, that life to him for the pleasure of its acquisition had an inexpressible value. Percival was always a wonder to everybody. He moved under the elms with a bent head, introspective, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, buried in abstraction, living in an ideal world. And his own townsmen even were wont to pause, and turn and gaze upon him as he slowly glided past, as though he was an inhabitant of another sphere, and he was as one such. His own beautiful lines describe the source of his joys: "The world is full of poetry, The air is living with its spirit And the waves dance to the music of its melodies, And sparkle in its brightness; Earth is veiled and mantled in its beauty; And the walls that close the universe With crystal in, are eloquent with the voices That proclaim the unseen glories of immensity." Now, I come to my life-directing incident. Although bred in the atmosphere of books, one day early in 1838, there was brought into the bookstore for a subscriber, a book entitled, "Historical Collections of Connecticut," which impressed me more than any I had seen. The author, the pioneer of works on this plan, was John W. Barber, an engraver, then forty years of age and a fellow townsman. Mr. Barber in a little one-horse wagon went over Connec |