Excerpt from Memorial Letters to My Grandchildren

I AM made very happy in the thought that you all were old enough to know and remember your grandpapa. It is a pleasure to think that he was near and with you during the last summer of his life; that you saw him every day and that you learned, at least the older ones among you, to know his pleasant smile and to feel that he loved you. I think, too, that you will re member the last time you looked upon his kindly face when he lay peacefully at rest, and you placed your hand upon his cold forehead, and he did not open his eyes to greet you or move his lips for the usual kiss. And perhaps you will never forget the sweet and tender services in my sick room, where you all came to comfort me before the dear form was carried from my sight to the church, where you listened to the solemn services, and where you saw the many friends who had gathered to pay their last loving tribute of respect to him. Ihope it will not prove to be so sad a lesson as it seemed at the time, but that its memory will be such a help and blessing to you in your future life that the sadness will no longer overshadow it.

Though you may remember all these things about your grand papa, you will still know but little about his life that I think you would like to know, unless some one, who was familiar with him, is able and willing to tell you; so I have determined to' write you a series of letters, beginning with his infancy, which shall give you a brief sketch of his early home, his life, and his character; and this shall be my labor of love for him and for you.

You have all been to the pleasant old homestead where his baby eyes first opened to the light of this beautiful world; you know the charming views from every point of the hill on which the house stands, just in the edge of Franklin, Massachusetts, and very near the Charles River, which runs at the foot of the hill and divides Franklin from Medway.

Your great-grandfather's farm extended through the broad pasture and down the hill to the river, along whose bank and far up the hillside were clusters of oaks and evergreens and various other kinds of trees which ornamented the tiny capes or points of land jutting out into the Stream. Along at the foot of this hill the river was quite deep, because of a dam just below that had been built for the use of a mill a little farther on. The beautiful trees that fringed the bank, with the old mill and the picturesque bridge below, made as pretty a scene in the landscape as one will often find.

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