163 
with their heads northwestward; but on reaching Berkshire he 
was surprised to see that they lay in an opposite direction and he 
repeatedly called my attention to the fact. In conversing -with 
the residents of that region as to the time these trees were pros- 
‘trated he was still more astonished to learn that the wind, which © 
at 9 p. M. had been from the southeast at Middletown, had been 
at Stockbridge from the northwest precisely at the same hour. 
* * * * It did not appear to him possible that two winds of 
such violence should be blowing against each other at the dis- 
tance of only seventy miles. The only explanation of this para- 
doxical phenomenon was one which he was then led to accept 
hypothetically, but which he afterwards confirmed by years of ob- 
servation and innumerable facts.” It was thus that the elder Red- 
field was led to the theory of the rotary as well as progressive 
movement of storms which procured him so much note as a 
meteorologist. 
Our friend’s first public education came from the district 
school, which his father had taken great pains to have above the 
usual standard. In addition, there were the “spelling classes” 
and ‘friendly associations,” and a small circulating library— 
agencies which he acknowledged to have been helps to him in his 
aspirations for knowledge, as they have been to many others. Of 
the effects of the “spdllling class” exercises he says: “I am fool- 
ish enough to believe that those winter evening battles were more 
useful and creditable than some of the athletic contests which in 
these days are doing so much to brutalize young men, and which, 
by their attendant betting leading to the worst results of gam- 
bling, are tending to make old and thoughtful men raise the 
question whether colleges are not becoming institutions to be 
avoided.” 
Of books at this time there were but few, but all he could get 
he read with avidity. Like every one else, he was fascinated with 
Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, both as to the story and the quaint 
old prints. He writes: “That of Apollyon’s battle with Christian 
so excited my imagination that when, being a little older, I was 
sent to the wood pile in the fast darkening twilight of a winter after- 
noon to bring in the evening supply of wood, I never felt alto- 
gether secure from that dreadful demon until the last armful was 
