the Lyceum, in business and in
social ways. In connection with the Lyceum I prepared papers which I
read as lectures. One of these papers upon banking, signed B.,
appeared in the Bay State _Democrat_, edited by Lewis Josselyn, the
publisher. Another upon Conservatism and Religion, was also printed in
the Bay State _Democrat_. As I did not give my name to Mr. Josselyn,
and as the letters were mailed at Groton, he came there and after
inquiries, called upon me. I admitted the authorship. This
acquaintance continued for many years, and for many years I was a
contributor to his paper. He was elected secretary of the Senate in
1843 by the Democratic Party. A little later I wrote an article
called "Gibbet Hill" in which I attempted to present the tradition
concerning the hill in Groton which bears that name. That article was
printed in the _Yeoman's Gazette_ or the Concord _Freeman_. For
several years beginning about the year 1836, I wrote one paper each
year called a lecture. Several of these papers were printed in Hunt's
_Merchants' Magazine_.

From 1835 to 1841 I occupied the store night and day and it was my
custom to read and write until twelve, one or two o'clock in the
morning. These were my years of hard study. Not infrequently, when
a tendency to sleep was too heavy for study, I bathed my face and head
in cold water and thus revived my faculties--a practice, however, that
I cannot commend. Early in my residence in Groton, I formed the
acquaintance and friendship of Dr. Amos B. Bancroft, a friendship which
continued until his death in Italy in the year 1879. It was with Dr.
Bancroft that I continued my studies in Latin. In 1835, he had
finished his professional studies with Dr. Shattuck, of Boston, then
an eminent physician. Dr. Shattuck had studied his profession with Dr.
Amos Bancroft, the father of Amos B. Dr. Amos, as he was called, was
a graduate of Harvard College in the class of Wendell Phillips, and at
the close of his professional studies he was spoken of as the best
educated physician who had entered the profession in Boston. At the
time our acquaintance began, he was entering upon the practice of
medicine, at Groton, in place of his father, who was then about sixty-
five years of age, deaf, and not healthy in other respects, although he
lived to the age of eighty years, and then died from an accident in
State Street, Boston. Dr. Bancroft, Sr., lived in a house which stood
about one hun