374 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



REV. DR. SPRAGUE TO G. P. FISHER. 



ALBANY, July 11, 1865. 



MY DEAR PROFESSOR FISHER, I will not dissemble 

 the fact that I feel honored by your request that I should 

 communicate to you some of my recollections of our dear 

 and venerated friend, Professor Silliman, in aid of your 

 proposed memoir of him ; but I greatly fear that the best I 

 can do, in compliance with your request, will disappoint 

 you. My relations with him during several of his last years, 

 were indeed intimate, even affectionate ; but our meetings 

 were by no means frequent, and nearly all our intercourse 

 was through the medium of a correspondence which is 

 already in your possession. I will state a few incidents in 

 connection with the history of my acquaintance with him, 

 which come readily to my remembrance, together with the 

 general impression which his character made upon me. 



My first knowledge of Professor Silliman dates back to 

 the period when he returned from Europe, after his sojourn 

 there with a view to prepare himself for the duties of his 

 professorship. His name, at this time, became well known 

 in and around my native place, (Andover, Conn.,) from the 

 fact that Andover was in the neighborhood of Lebanon, the 

 residence of Governor Trumbull, to whose daughter he was 

 engaged to be married ; and the visits that he used to make 

 to this charming lady served as materials for gossip a dozen 

 miles off. After awhile the Journal of his travels and 

 residence abroad appeared in two volumes, and though I 

 was not much more than a dozen years old, well do I 

 remember with what wonder and delight I followed him 

 about in his transatlantic wanderings, and how much more 

 interested I was in those books than in any others I had 

 ever read. When I came to College in 1811, I was not a 

 little curious to see the man of whom I had heard so much, 

 and with whose writings my youthful mind had become so 

 entranced. When he was pointed out to me, I thought 





