84 |; Rhodora [May 
of which, on the Sunday when it was first set up in church, caused 
such discomfort to the older and more Spartan members of Dr. Lyman 
Beecher’s congregation — until they discovered that there was no 
fireinit. It was during this period that Mr. Brace’s interest in natural 
history seems to have been most keen. 
In 1820 he married Miss Lucy Porter, a sister of the second Mrs. 
Lyman Beecher. In 1833 he moved to Hartford to become principal 
of another well-known school of that time — the Hartford Female 
Seminary. As a teacher, he seems to have possessed unusual ability. 
One of his pupils was Harriet Beecher Stowe, who afterward took him 
as the original of “ Rossiter” in “Old Town Folks." There, and in a 
letter of reminiscence printed in Lyman Beecher’s Autobiography, 
may be found an interesting account of his methods and personality. 
He was especially good in English composition. He needed to be, 
to arouse in a girl of nine, even one who was destined to become a 
writer of prominence, any enthusiasm for the subjects which in those 
days were wont to be assigned for the puzzlement of youthful heads — 
“The Difference,” for instance, “between the Natural and Moral 
Sublime.” But Mrs. Stowe testifies that he accomplished it. 
Mr. Brace’s name appears in successive Hartford directories as 
principal of the Female Seminary until 1846. Then, for a while, he 
lived in New Milford; and about this time he may have written the 
novels, one of which was published in 1847 and another, a tale of the 
early days of Hartford, in 1853. About 1850 he became editor of the 
Hartford Courant. His successors testify that he made an excellent 
editor, even as he had made an excellent teacher. Certainly, his 
editorials show a humor and a quaint way of mingling classical allu- 
sions and colloquialisms which makes them, even today, by no means 
unentertaining reading. For years, we are told, he was able to do all 
the work required to fill the columns of his daily issue, “the editorial 
variety being small and city or local news only such as accidentally 
found its way to the office." That office was in an old attic room, 
* filled with books on all sides — a valuable library, too — and every- 
thing in it covered with dust and cobwebs." Doubtless this is the 
room to which his niece, Mrs. Asa Gray, used to climb when she 
stopped over in Hartford in the course of annual visits to her relatives 
in Litchfield. 
Mr. Brace remained editor of the Courant during the ten years of 
gathering political passion which preceded the Civil War. In 1861 
