8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1825, 



and Greek for two years, excepting the three summer 

 months, when I was taken home to assist in the corn 

 and hayfield. For my father, buying up, little by 

 little, lands which had been cleared for charcoal, had 

 become a farmer in a small way, an occupation to 

 which he was most inclined. So about these times 

 he sold out the tannery and bought a small farm 

 nearer to Sauquoit, mainly of the land which my 

 maternal grandfather had settled on, including the 

 house in which he had married my mother. To it he 

 removed, and there resided until he bought out an 

 adjacent small farm in addition, with an old house 

 very pleasantly situated, which he rebuilt and lived 

 in until after I had attained my majority. But soon 

 after that he bought a small farm close to the Sauquoit 

 village on the western or Presbyterian side, hard by 

 the meeting-house the family had always attended. 

 There my father indulged his special fancy by re- 

 building another old house, and the place, after his 

 death, and, much later, after that of my mother, fell 

 to my eldest brother, who still possesses it. 1 



I am not sure, but I think it was after two years 

 of the Clinton Grammar School that I was transferred 

 to Fairfield Academy. 2 Fairfield, Herkimer County, 



1 Asa Gray was the oldest of eight children, three sisters and four 

 brothers, of whom there survive two sisters and two brothers. 



2 Dr. Gray visited Fairfield again in the summer of I860 or 1861. 

 He pointed out his old room, and told about some of the pranks he 

 and his room-mate Eli Avery had played there as boys, especially 

 once when they barred their room, escaped through the window 

 by clambering down a rope, and then enjoyed the efforts of the 

 master to break the door down. Oddly enough there was then a fresh 

 panel in the door, as if a later generation had tried the same trick. 

 There were a great many stories told of his exploits as a boy. But 

 he said everything had been fathered upon him, and that few were 

 really true. He was no doubt restless and active, and learning 



