an this pen can, the foregoing is respectfully tendered.

Very respectfully yours,
ADIN BALLOU.

But it is not necessary to seek an explanation of Judge Thayer's
interest in life beyond the native tendencies which came to
him by lawful inheritance. More than one person of his name
and blood in former generations were noted for their public
spirit and exercised a large influence in the affairs of the
town. Traditions of two brothers, Captain Caleb Thayer and
'Squire Elisha Thayer, are still fresh. Captain Caleb Thayer
was the great-grandfather of Adin Thayer, Esquire. Elijah
was grandfather of Hon. Eli Thayer, member of Congress from
the Worcester district, and founder of the Emigrant Aid Society,
which had so illustrious a share in saving Kansas from slavery.
Eli Thayer tells me Elijah governed Mendon. He always carried
in town meeting what he wanted to carry, and killed what he
wanted to kill.

Caleb Thayer, the father of the Judge, was an early anti-
slavery man, and one of the founders of the Free Soil Party.
He was a man of vigorous sense and great public spirit. He
had large interests in Mendon and Blackstone. He represented
Mendon in the Legislature and helped elect Charles Sumner
to the Senate in 1851. He was generally sociable and cheerful,
but subject to occasional periods of depression of spirits,
when he liked to remain in solitude until the time of gloom
passed by.

Adin Thayer's education was chiefly in the district schools
of his neighborhood. Hosea Biglow may be taken as the type
of the ordinary Yankee country boy of that day. Adin had
the advantage, better, if you can have but one, than any
university, of being brought up in the country. He was a
member of that absolute democracy, the old-fashioned New
England country town, where character and worth were the
only titles to respect in the community, where the son of
a President or the son of a Senator or of a Governor stood
on an absolute and entire social equality with the son of the
washerwoman. If the son of a President or Governor gave
himself any airs on that account, he had applied to him a
very vigorous and effective remedy well known to our Saxon
ancestors.

Adin Thayer came to manhood when the hosts of slavery and
freedom were marshalling for the great contest for the territory
between the Mississippi and the Pacific.

He was soaked in Scripture, especially in the Old Testament,
a soaking which has somewhat the same e