24 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



for boys at our age to resolve at a glance the sometimes 

 long and elaborate and involved sentences and sections of 

 the Orations of Cicero. Still, we diligently worked our 

 way through them. 



From a more extended sketch of society in Fair- 

 field a few extracts follow. 



There w&s also in Fairfield pleasant society. Thaddeus 

 Burr, Esq., was a principal inhabitant, and a man of wealth, 

 especially before his large mansion was burned and his 

 property devastated by the British, in July, 1779. He then 

 converted a store or warehouse into a dwelling, and it was 

 a neat and commodious mansion. Mr. Burr was hospi- 

 table, and his wife was an accomplished lady. The place is 

 memorable, having been a favorite resort of Dr. Dwight, 

 afterward President of Yale College. He was then minis- 

 ter of Greenfield, and gave celebrity to that hill, both by 

 the splendor of his talents and pulpit eloquence, and by 

 the Academy for the instruction of the youth of both 

 sexes, which he established and conducted for a series of 

 years with great success. Dr. Dwight generally rode down 

 two or three miles on horseback on Saturday afternoon, to 

 pass those hours of relaxation, and take tea with his friends, 

 Mr. and Mrs. Burr. He possessed rare colloquial talents. 

 His mind was rich in intellectual stores, which he freely 

 imparted in conversation, with a genial warmth of social 

 feeling, and with the advantage of a noble person, a fine 

 and powerful voice, and impressive features. His conver- 

 sation was equally entertaining and instructive, a feast for 

 both mind and heart. 



Judge Jonathan Sturges, a noble gentleman, was an or- 

 nament to the town. He was a graduate of Yale, (in the 

 class of 1759,) and although seven years later than my 

 father's class of 1752, they were friends and contemporaries 

 at the bar, at which both were eminent practitioners. Mr. 

 Sturges was a member of the House of Representatives of 



