Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/85

Rh front of my house. At the close of business for the day, nine o’clock in the evening, I was in the habit of going to the office and reciting my Latin lesson, after which we discussed other matters. Upon my return to the store, I prepared myself for the next evening’s recitation. In this way I read Cæsar and Virgil. In a closet in Bancroft’s office there was a skeleton. That skeleton had a history, and possibly there may be a sequel to it. It was understood to have been the skeleton of a man named Jack Frost, who was tried, convicted and executed at Worcester for the crime of murder committed at or near Princeton. Dr. Bancroft, Sr., had been the owner of the skeleton. Oftentimes I rode Sundays with Dr. Amos. On the occasion of one of these drives, and after the death of Dr. Bancroft, Sr., we passed the house of a waggish old man named Asa Tarbell. After a little conversation Tarbell said, “I shall be over soon for Frost’s skeleton.” Dr. Amos, amazed, looked over and through his glasses, and said, at length: “Why, what do you mean?” Said Tarbell: “Some years ago, your father and I were playing, and I proposed to put up my uncle Ben against Frost. Your father agreed to the game, and I won. I told him I had no use for Frost at that time, and he might keep him.” Tarbell’s Uncle Ben was a man of inferior size, hardly more than a dwarf, who had been a drummer boy in the Revolution.

I bought the Bancroft estate in 1873, and my foreman, Mr. William A. Chase informed me that he had found a skeleton, in a barrel in a shed, and that he had buried it on the place. If again found it may lead to the suspicion that it is the skeleton of a murdered man, and not that of a murderer.

From 1835 to 1841, I read Locke, Say’s Political Economy, Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Plutarch, Josephus, Herodotus, Lingard, Hume and Smollett, Cicero, Demosthenes, Homer, Pope, Byron, Shakespeare, Boswell’s Johnson, Junius, The Tattler, The Rambler, the English Reviews, French from