DOMESTIC EVENTS. 277 



He who had given us this child of hope and promise had 

 a right to take him again ; and we blessed His holy name. 

 This bereavement took fast hold on me. The shaft of 

 death, which never before had been discharged in this 

 house, was levelled against my oldest son, a child of the 

 most attractive traits, lovely and beautiful, serious, con- 

 siderate, and affectionate, but with a slight air of pensive- 

 ness, which added to the interest of his character, although 

 a child not yet five years old when he died. We believed 

 that he was accepted by the Saviour, to whom he had been 

 offered in baptism and commended in prayer. 



The death of this child inflicted a wound which 

 was never fully healed. All the toys which he had 

 used were carefully garnered up by his sorrowing 

 father, who never ceased to recollect, with tenderness 

 of feeling, the loss which he had sustained. 



What with the labors, the watching, and anxiety of 

 the preceding year, followed by this affliction, my spirits 

 drooped and my health began to be affected, when a source 

 of alleviation was opened by my ever kind and considerate 

 brother-in-law, Mr. Daniel Wadsworth, and it was the 

 more seasonable, as death had more recently smitten an- 

 other lamb in our flock.* 



Neither Mr. Wadsworth or myself had ever visited Can- 

 ada, and we resolved on this journey as a tour of refresh- 

 ment and observation, without any motives of business. 

 As it is my habit, when circumstances are favorable, to 

 preserve written notices of my journeys, I began to do it 

 in this instance with the design of inserting in the " Journal 

 of Science " any notices that might appear worthy of it ; 

 but the interesting objects and scenes and historical asso- 

 ciations were so numerous that my MS. became a small 



* This was an infant which was born a week before the death of Trum- 

 buH. F. 



