Page:Letters of Life.djvu/27

Rh syntax. Sometimes they were accompanied with unsymmetrical and hideous drawings. Possibly the boys might have used the books in common, or rather in succession, during their school culture. Yet it must have required some courage thus to deface books which the New England mind was trained to revere, both from scarcity and a sense of their value; and to persevere wilfully in such courses, in days when scholastic discipline was wont to make itself both felt and remembered. I can well recollect with what veneration and clean hands I was instructed to approach our few, half-sainted volumes, and with what horror I regarded any child whose book disclosed the guilt of a dog's ear or a missing leaf.

My father, like his compeer, or, more properly, his predecessor, was also called to take part in the battles of his native land. He joined the first regiment that was raised in that portion of Connecticut, and marched with them to Boston, ere the Declaration of Independence had been promulgated. They passed their first night in the neighborhood of the lion-hearted Putnam, at Brooklyn, Conn., who had then but newly left his plough in the unfinished furrow, and rushed onward to stand by his country, till her struggle for existence should end in liberty and glory.

I may not here command space to particularize the events that connected my blessed father with the perils and victories of the Revolution. They took place long