I liked to attend church, for I could see so many folks, and the habit which I then acquired has never to this day left me, and my love for it dates back to this time in my youth, though the attractions now are different.

I shall never forget how frightened I was at the great eclipse which took place on the 16th of June, 1806, and which so terrified the good people in every part of the land.  They were more ignorant about such operations of the sun fifty-four years ago than at the present time.  I had heard something about eclipses but had not the faintest idea what it could be.  I was hoeing corn that day in a by-place three miles from town, and thought it certainly was the day of judgment.  I watched the sun steadily disappearing with a trembling heart, and not till it again appeared bright and shining as before, did I regain my breath and courage sufficient to whistle.

The winter before I was fifteen years old, I went to live with a house carpenter to learn the trade, and was bound to him by my guardian till I was twenty-one years old, and was to have my board and clothes for my services.  I learned the business very readily, and during the last three years of my apprenticeship could do the work of a man.

It was a very pleasant family that I lived with while learning my trade.  In the year 1809 my “boss” took a job in Torringford, and I went with him.  After being absent several months from home, I felt very anxious to see my poor mother who lived about two miles from Plymouth.  She lived alone—­with the exception of my youngest brother about nine years old.  I made up my mind that I would go down and see her one night.  In this way I could satisfy my boss by not losing any time.  It was about twenty miles, and I only sixteen years old.  I was really sorry after I had started, but was not the boy to back out.  It took me till nearly morning to get there, tramping through the woods half of the way; every noise I heard I thought was a bear or something that would kill me, and the frightful notes of the whippoorwill made my hair stand on end.  The dogs were after me at every house I passed.  I have never forgotten that night.  The boys of to-day do not see such times as I did.

The next year, 1810, my boss took a job in Ellsworth Society, Litchfield County.  I footed it to and from that place several times in the course of the year, with a load of joiners’ tools on my back.  What would a boy 17 years old now think to travel thirty miles in a hot summer’s day, with a heavy load of joiners’ tools on his back?  But that was about the only way that we could get around in those days.  At that time there were not half a dozen one-horse wagons in the whole town.  At that place I attended the church of Rev. Daniel Parker, father of Hon. Amasa J. Parker, of Albany, who was then a little boy four or five years old.  I often saw him at meeting with his mother.  He is a first cousin of F.S. & J. Parker of this city, two highly respectable men engaged in the paper business.