DAVID'S, July, 1883.

[11]I WAS born in Sheffield, Mass., on the 28th of March, 1794. My
grandparents, Stephen Dewey and Aaron Root, were among the early
settlers of the town, and the houses they built the one of brick, and
the other of wood--still stand. They came from Westfield, about forty
miles distant from Sheffield, on horseback, through the woods; there
were no roads then. We have always had a tradition in our family that
the male branch is of Welsh origin. When I visited Wales in 1832, I
remember being struck with the resemblance I saw in the girls and young
women about me to my sisters, and I mentioned it when writing home. On
going up to London, I became acquainted with a gentleman, who, writing a
note one day to a friend of mine and speaking of me, said: "I spell the
name after the Welsh fashion, Devi; I don't know how he spells it." On
inquiring of this gentleman, and he referred me also to biographical
dictionaries,--I found that our name had an origin of unsuspected
dignity, not to say sanctity, being no other than that of Saint David,
the patron saint [12] of Wales, which is shortened and changed in the
speech of the common people into Dewi.'

Everyone tries, I suppose, to penetrate as far back as he can into his
childhood, back towards his infancy, towards that mysterious and shadowy
line behind which lies his unremembered existence. Besides the usual
life of a child in the country,--running foot-races with my brother
Chandler, building brick ovens to bake apples in the side-hill opposite
the house, and the steeds of willow sticks cut there, and beyond the
unvarying gentleness of my mother and the peremptory decision and
playfulness at the same time of my father,--his slightest word was
enough to hush the wildest tumult among us children, and yet he was
usually gay and humorous in his family,--besides and beyond this, I
remember nothing till the first event in my early childhood, and that
was acting in a play. It was performed in the church, as part of a
school exhibition. The stage was laid upon the pews, and the audience
seated in the gallery. I must have been about five years old then, and I
acted the part of a little son. I remember feeling, then and afterwards,
very queer and shamefaced about my histrionic papa and mamma. It is
striking to observe, not only how early, but how powerfully, imagination
[13] is developed in our childhood. For some time after, I regarded
those imaginary parents as sust