leave that splendid clustre [sic] of
buildings with all its machinery, and its thousands of good customers
all over this country and Europe, and in fact the whole world, which in
itself was a fortune. And then to leave that beautiful mansion at the
head of the New Haven bay, which I had almost worshipped. I say to leave
all these things for others, with that spirit and pride that still
remained within me, and at my time of life, was almost too much for
flesh and blood to bear. What could have been the feelings of my family,
and my large circle of friends and acquaintances, to see creditors and
officers coming to our house every day with their pockets full of
attachments and piles of them on the table every night. If any one can
ever begin to know my feelings at this time, they must have passed
through the same experience. Yet mortified and abused as I was, I had to
put up with it. Thank God, I have never been the means of such trouble
for others. I had to move to Waterbury in my old age, and there commence
again to try to get a living. I moved in the fall of 1856, and as bad
luck would have it, rented a house not two rods from a large church with
a very large steeple attached to it, which had been built but a short
time before. In one of the most terrific hurricanes and snow storms that
I ever knew in my life, at four o'clock in the morning of January 19th,
1857, this large steeple fell on the top of our house which was a three
story brick building. It broke through the roof and smashed in all the
upper tier of rooms, the bricks and mortar falling to the lower floor.
We were in the second story, and some of the bricks came into our room,
breaking the glass and furniture, and the heaviest part of the whole lay
directly on our house. It was the opinion of all who saw the ruins that
we did not stand one chance in ten thousand of not being killed in a
moment. I heard many a man say he would not take the chances that we had
for all the money in the State. One man in the other part of the house
was so frightened that he was crazy for a long time. Timbers in this
steeple, ten inches square, broke in two directly over my bed and their
weight was tremendous. I now began to think that my troubles were coming
in a different form; but it seems I was not to die in that way. The
business took a different shape in the spring, and I moved (another task
of moving!) to Ansonia. Here I lived two years, but very unfortunately
happened to get