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Recollections of a Lifetime: Or Men and Things I Have Seen: In a Series of Familiar Letters to a Friend, Historical, Biographical, Anecdotical, and Descriptive
Recollections of a Lifetime Or Men and Things I Have Seen In a Series of Familiar Letters to a Friend Historical Biographical Anecdotical and Descriptive Author:Samuel Griswold Goodrich Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER III, Tin first Remembered Event—High Ridge—The Spy-glati—Sea and Mountain—The Peel—The Slack Patch in the road. My Deas c You will perhaps forgiv... more »e me for a little circumlocution, in the outset of my story. My desire is to carry you with me in my narrative, and make you see in imagination, what I have seen. This naturally requires a little effort—like that of the bird in rising from the ground, which turns his wing first to the right and then to the left, vigorously beating the atmosphere, in order to overcome the gravity which weighs the body down to earth, ere yet it feels the quickening impulse of a conscious launch upon the air. My memory goes distinctly back to the year 1797, when I was four years old. At that time a great event happened—great in the near and narrow horizon of childhood: we removed from the Old House to the New House! This latter, situated on a road tending westward and branching from the main street, my father had just built; and it then appeared to me quite a stately mansion and very beautiful, inasmuch as it was painted red behind and white in front—most of the dwellings thereabouts being ofthe dun complexion which pine-boards and chestnut- ehingles assume, from exposure to the weather. Long after—having been absent twenty years—I revisited this my early home, and found it shrunk into a very small and ordinary two-story dwelling, wholly divested of its paint, and scarcely thirty feet square. This building, apart from all other dwellings, was situated on what is called High Ridge—a long hill, looking down upon the village, and commanding an extensive view of the surrounding country. From our upper windows, this was at once beautiful and diversified. On the south, as I have said, the hills sloped in a sea of undulations down to Long Isla...« less