298 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



The certainty that his remaining time must be 

 short, was not absent from his thoughts ; yet it 

 brought no gloom. 



January 1st. The New Year 1861, ^.82 I 



am now nearer by one year to the eternal world, and it 

 may be written of me, " this year shalt thou die ; " and I 

 am admonished by the removal of my youthful grand- 

 daughter * that I must soon follow. If I could not rely upon 

 the great salvation wrought out by our Saviour, I should 



be dismayed at the approach of death I hope I am 



not deceived, and that I may be accepted by my Maker, 

 although I may appear among the most humble of the 

 redeemed i 



Judge Williams.^ He was two years in advance 



of my brother and me in Yale College, he being a Junior 

 while we were Freshmen, he having entered the College 

 in 1790 and we in 1792. We were, in 1792-3, fellow- 

 boarders at Dr. Joseph Darling's, in the Greenough House, 

 that stood in front of what is now Divinity College. In 

 our walk to College one morning, Mr. Williams mentioned 

 that the French had guillotined their King, Louis XVI. 

 As his death took place on the 25th of January, 1793, the 

 mention of it was probably in February. I was then in my 

 fourteenth year, nearly sixty-eight years ago, and the recol- 

 lection of it is still fresh in my memory. From that period 

 our acquaintance was continued, and as Mr. Thomas S. 

 Williams had a brother, Samuel Porter Williams, in my 

 class, we were drawn nearer together by this circumstance. 

 In February 1798, I resorted to Wethersfield, being in 

 my nineteenth year, and during nine months I instructed 

 the subscription school. For a few weeks I was a mem- 

 ber of the family of Sheriff Williams, father of Thomas S. 



* Miss Maria T. Church, who died December 23, 1860. F. 

 t He died December 15, 1861. F. 



