Page:A new England boyhood by Hale, Edward Everett.djvu/31

Rh passengers than could go on one stage some of them had to stop; and those who got on last were the ones who had to stop.

I arrived at Brookfield at night, having left Northampton in the morning. The person who had come the shortest distance was a lady. She was in great distress that she could not go on. I had a sort of desire to stay there to see Howe and Henshaw, but I should not have thought of staying a day but to let this lady go on.

At Exeter, in the charming society of that place, he met the Peabodys and Alexander Hill Everett, who was the other "preceptor," the preceptor of Greek and Latin. He graduated at Harvard in 1806. These two young men became very fond of each other, and when, in 1808 my father determined to leave Exeter and come to Boston to study law, he became acquainted with all Mr. Everett's Boston friends.

Meanwhile, when he was twelve years old, my mother had been born, in Dorchester, now a part of the municipality of Boston. Her father, in delicate health, had left his charge in 1792. Her mother was a Boston girl, one of the daughters of Alexander Sears Hill and Mary Richey of Santa Cruz. The tradition was that Alexander Sears Hill had gone to