8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



detail not only those early recollections but a com- 

 plete autobiography. My daughter, Mary, on 

 one of her visits to the old homestead of the Rob- 

 erts family in New York, found some tattered yel- 

 low papers in a market basket under the business 

 desk belonging to my eldest brother, Ralph. These 

 proved to be the private papers of her great-grand- 

 father, Joseph Burroughs, which had been taken 

 from an old desk in the Burroughs farmhouse and 

 which would have been destroyed, perhaps, but for 

 her interest in them. 



These documents essays, poems, riddles, et 

 cetera, had no great literary merit but reflected 

 the taste of the time and showed that my grand- 

 father Burroughs, who was a school teacher in 

 his youth and a farmer throughout his adult life, 

 had, at any rate, intellectual aspirations. My 

 daughter, therefore, proposed that I should con- 

 tinue the literary tradition and leave this informal 

 account of my life to my children and grandchil- 

 dren. 



I realize that this is a somewhat difficult under- 

 taking, as I have no notes or letters of the earlier 

 period to guide me, the few papers I had having 

 been destroyed when my house was burned in 1 863. 

 In old age, however, one is likely to remember the 



