VISIT TO HIS EARLY HOME. 89 



having been burned by the British troops. In this old 

 house, fifty-seven and fifty-eight years ago, my brother and 

 I were prepared for college. We went up into the cham- 

 ber where we used to recite, and saw the very spot on which 

 stood Mr. Eliot's bookcase, containing beautiful volumes 

 which he had saved from the conflagration of Fairfield, 

 and which he frequently dusted with great care, as he would 



trust no one else to do it We went to the good 



old mansion of my father. We passed the same little 

 bridge, made of a single flat stone, laid over a brook, dry 

 in summer, but occasionally filled by the rains and snow 

 floods. That bridge was often passed by me when a child, 

 and I was delighted to find it there, and also another little 

 bridge, over another transient brook, nearer to the house. 

 I had sent a note to Mrs. Penfield, the present occupant, 

 apprising her of our coming, and she and her daughter 

 were ready to receive us, and treated us with great cordial- 

 ity. We went through the house, and I told my children 

 many interesting things of early days. The house is, in 

 the inside, unaltered in the most material things : the two 

 best rooms are almost exactly as they were fifty-six years 

 ago when my father died. The best chamber is entirely 

 unaltered; the same Prussian blue paint on the wood- 

 work of this chamber, and the panels and all, without 

 shrinkage or injury of any kind. There is the same sky- 

 blue paper, of small figure, on the walls, and the same 

 narrow boards of white-wood or tulip-tree in the floor ; the 

 same deep closet where my father's arms were kept, with 

 a wig of my grandfather Silliman. A barrel of hickory- 

 nuts was always kept there, and on opening the door we 

 found a pile of the same sort of nuts. In this chamber, 

 our dear mother had a season of retirement with us, her 

 two younger sons, in the morning after breakfast, to hear 

 us read the Bible, and instruct us in its contents, while she 

 combed our hair and prepared us for school. I have re- 

 purchased the same large family Bible, which was then in 



