haps another
sketch of the life of this leader may encourage others to search for
clearer views of the ways by which our ancestors established the
institutions which we hope are to endure.

Daniel Brown, the father of Colonel John Brown, came from Haverhill,
Mass., to the western part of the Commonwealth in 1752, when his son
John was eight years old. He seems to have been first in the beautiful
town of Sandisfield to take part in its local government, both secular
and ecclesiastical. "Deacon Brown" is called prosperous when this new
town on the banks of the Farmington River, east of the hills of the
Housatonic, bade fair to equal Pittsfield as a trading-place. "The
Deacon" was a local magistrate under the king, when laymen served as
judges. John, his youngest son, is described as tall and powerful, an
athlete able to kick a football over the elm-tree on the college green
at New Haven when he entered at twenty-three years of age, older in
years than most college students of the year 1767.

It is believed that he prepared for college with some citizen of the
neighborhood, and it is known that he married before graduating in
1771.

While at New Haven, he was fully informed of the peculiarities of
Benedict Arnold, then a storekeeper, already disgraced in the eyes of
respectable citizens because of his desertion from the British army
and his reckless disregard for the rights of his creditors; for then
the debtor was not allowed to retain his respectability, if he failed
dishonestly. Furthermore, his self-assertion was recognized as too
often a display of arrogance and vanity. Brown's sister Elizabeth had
married Oliver Arnold, attorney-general of Rhode Island, a cousin of
Benedict, and it is reasonable to suppose that he was well informed of
Arnold's misdeeds, which thus became known to John Brown.

In 1771, when he was graduated from Yale, only twenty men were of his
class. Quite a large number of Yale graduates took part with the
patriots, and Humphreys, one of the class of 1771, was aide-de-camp to
Washington. He, I believe, is the only writer in verse who extolled
this John Brown. How often we are indebted to poets for our heroes! If
this John Brown had incited an insurrection and been hanged for
killing his fellow-men contrary to law in time of peace, "his soul
might be marching on." If, when he rode from Ticonderoga on horse at a
high rate of speed to Philadelphia, to inform the Continental Congress
that his frie