GEORGE SEWALL BOUTWELL. 1 7 



called upon me. I admitted the authorship. This acquaint- 

 ance continued for many years, and for many years I was a 

 contributor to his paper. He was elected secretary of the 

 Senate in 1843 by the Democratic Party. A little later I wrote 

 an article called " Gibbet Hill " in which I attempted to 

 present the tradition concerning the hill in Groton which 

 bears that name. That article was printed in the Yeoman's 

 Gazette or the Concord Freevian. For several years begin- 

 ning about the year 1836, I wrote one paper each year called 

 a lecture. Several of these papers were printed in Hunt's 

 Merchants'' Magazine. 



From 1835 to 1841 I occupied the store night and day and 

 it was my custom to read and write until twelve, one or two 

 o'clock in the morning. These were my years of hard study. 

 Not infrequently, when a tendency to sleep was too heavy for 

 study, I bathed my face and head in cold water and thus 

 revived my faculties — a practice, however, that I cannot 

 commend. Early in my residence at Groton, I formed the 

 acquaintance and friendship of Dr. Amos Bancroft, a friend- 

 ship which continued until his death in Italy in the year 1879. 

 It was with Dr. Bancroft that I continued my studies in Latin. 

 In 1835, he had finished his professional studies with Dr. Shat- 

 tuck, of Boston, then an eminent physician. Dr. Shattuck 

 had studied his profession with Dr. Amos Bancroft, the father 

 of Amos B. Dr. Amos, as he was called, was a graduate of 

 Harvard College in the class of Wendell Phillips, and at the 

 close of his professional studies he was spoken of as the best 

 educated physician who had entered the profession in Boston. 

 At the time our acquaintance began, he was entering upon 

 the practice of medicine, at Groton, in place of his father, who 

 was then about sixty-five years of age, deaf, and not healthy 

 in other respects, although he lived to the age of eighty 

 years, and then died from an accident in State Street, Boston. 

 Dr. Bancroft, Sr., lived in a house which stood about one 

 hundred feet north of my present residence, and the office of 

 Dr. Amos was on the spot now occupied by the front of my 

 house. At the close of business for the day, nine o'clock in 

 the evening, I was in the habit of going to the office and recit- 



