JST. 7.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 1 



There was a year or two of early boyhood in which I 

 was sent to a small " select " or private school, taught 

 at Sauquoit, by the son of the pastor of the parish ; 

 a year or two following, in which I was in my maternal 

 grandfather's family, near by, as a sort of office-boy ; 

 and at the age of twelve, or near it, I was sent off to 

 the Clinton Grammar School, nine miles away, where 

 I was drilled after a fashion in the rudiments of Latin 



he jumped up and ran, I suppose wishing me in Halifax. I felt 

 sorry for him and would have been willing' to divide with him if he 

 had not crowed over me so. I ran nearly all the way home a good 

 mile with my treasure, in great haste to have some one tell me the 

 best way to invest my money. I was told to go another three quarters 

 of a mile to Stephen Savage's store, spend it for calico, piece it up, to 

 keep forever. I could get only one yard for my two-shilling piece, not 

 nearly as good as can be bought now for three cents a yard. Not a trace 

 of the quilt is left, nor of the old schoolhouse, or of those merry 

 children ; perhaps a few have wandered on to fourscore years. So it 

 is little I can relate of his childhood, as the next year we moved from 

 that district, but as years passed on I often heard of his rising fame 

 with pleasure. If Eli Avery were living he would have been his best 

 biographer in this place. 



The time has flown so fast since all this transpired, it seems as if 

 his tears had hardly dried before my grandchildren were studying his 

 Botanies. 



Two years ago the 9th day of September, when the doctor was 

 visiting in Sauquoit, he called here and remarked, in his smiling way, 

 "that he had got all over feeling badly about that.' 11 I said, "And 

 well you may when you have received so many honors since then." 



Your loving friend, 



HARRIET ROGERS. 



A neighbor who survived to a great age also told a story of Dr. 

 Gray's boyhood, which he said he had from Dr. Gray's father: 



One day he had been set to hoe a certain amount of corn, and his 

 father found him reading instead of at his work. He gave him his 

 choice, to finish his task and then read comfortably, or to sit there in 

 the field all day in the hot sun, which one knows is no pleasant thing 

 in August, and read. He chose the reading, and his father said then, 

 " I made up my mind he might make something of a scholar, but he 

 would never make a farmer ! " And so his farther education was de- 

 cided. 



