Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/30

 parent, and by whom his attachment was reciprocated, used familiarly to style him her "philosophical nephew." By the light-minded, he was considered reserved, and by the ignorant, haughty; but those, who were worthy to comprehend him, discovered a heart, alive to the impulses of friendship and affection, and a mind, occupied in a tissue of thought too intricate for vulgar comprehension; or balancing the delicate and almost imperceptible points of moral principle.

Besides this nephew, the family of Madam L comprised, at the present time, only herself, and two domestics. These were blacks, and descendants of ancestors who had originally been slaves, before the voice of a wise and free people decreed the abolition of slavery. Several Africans had been owned by the father of her husband, in whose family she had become an inmate at the time of her marriage. His death took place, at the advanced age of ninety-two, while his frame still possessed vigour, and his unimpaired mind expatiated freely upon the past, and looked undaunted toward the future. Temperance had guarded his health, and economy the fortune, which his industry had acquired. Religion had been his anchor from his youth, sure and stedfast; and, with the dignity of a patriarch, he descended to the tomb, illustrious at once, by the good name he bequeathed to his offspring, and by the lustre which their virtues in turn, reflected upon him. He lived at a time, when to hold in servitude the children of Africa, had not been set in a true light by