12 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



admitted, remembered and welcomed. Recognized I could 

 not expect to be after a separation of forty-three years, I 

 having attained to sixty-six years, and she, as I judged, 

 having just turned threescore. I found her still a hand- 

 some woman of noble mien. Age did not tell upon her 

 features ; but there was a pensiveness of manner which 

 told of sorrows past. All the members of her family were 

 dead, except the eccentric brother, who had married below 

 his rank, and was living in Louisiana, odd as ever, and the 

 gentle young Mary, now an old and infirm lady. Miss 

 Lynch Bowman retained one trait unchanged by time. 

 She had preserved her musical, mellifluous voice to which 

 forty-three years ago I was delighted to listen. When I 

 remarked that doubtless she would not have recognized me, 

 she replied that had she been told that I was in a particular 

 circle of gentlemen, she thought she could have picked me 



out She inquired after my brother, Gold S. Silli- 



man, her early teacher, and said she would have seen him 

 last summer when she was in New York, on the way to 

 Boston, had she known his residence. She left the room 

 for a few moments, doubtless to order tea, but I was obliged 

 to decline. She expressed a wish to see my son, and it was 

 my intention to renew my call, and to see her again on my 

 return from New Orleans in the Spring ; but this design 

 was frustrated by our ascending the Mississippi. I greatly 

 regretted the change, as my renewed acquaintance with 

 Miss Bowman was confined to a brief interview. 



He attended a party, composed of leading gentle- 

 men of the city, at the house of Dr. Samuel H. Dick- 

 son, a graduate of Yale College, in the class of 1814. 

 From Mr. Legare's family, whose home " was a 

 model of taste, order, and beauty," he received grati- 

 fying manifestations of regard ; and he carried away 

 pleasant impressions of Charleston society. 



