“Dear old Litchfield! I love thee still, even if thou didst me the despite of pushing me into life upon thy high and windy hilltop! Where did the spring ever break forth more joyously and sing at escaping from winter, as the children of Israel did when that woman’s-rights Miriam chanted her song of victory? Where did the torrid summer ever find a lovelier place in which to cool its beams? What trees ever murmured more gently to soft winds, or roared more lion-like when storms were abroad? “It was there that we learned to fish, to ride a horse alone, to do the barn chores, to cut and split wood, to listen at evening to the croaking frogs and whistling tree-toads, to go to meeting and go to sleep, to tear holes in new clothes; there we learned to hoe, to mow away hay, to weed onions, to stir up ministers’ horses with an unusual speed when ridden to water; there we went a-wandering up and down forest-edges, and along the crooked brooks in flower-pied meadows, dreaming about things not to be found in any catechism.” Equally marked was Litchfield at that day for its social and moral as for its natural advantages. Its early settlers, mostly from the excellent stock from which the colonies of Hartford and Windsor were formed, were men of broad and liberal mould, and began their work upon this hilltop in a characteristic fashion. They laid out their streets and staked off the village common with such generous breadth that they remain the delight of residents and the admiration of strangers to this day. They made such liberal provision for education and religion that the settlement soon became noted for the excellency of its schools and the commanding influence of its pulpit.[1] ----- Footnote 1: Out of sixty-four allotments into which the town was divided, one was to be given to the first minister, to be his and descend to his heirs for ever; a second was to be reserved for the use of the minister during his ministry, and a third was reserved for the benefit of a school. While as yet three houses, one in the centre of the present village, and one on either side a mile distant, were picketed and garrisoned for protection against the Indians, and while there were but sixty adult male inhabitants, they built their first church edifice, with a Sabbath-Day House for the better accommodation of the people. ----- The law-school of Judges Reeve and Gould, and the young ladies’ school of the Misses Pierce, made it an educational centre scarcely second in the breadth of its influence to any in the land, and attracted a class of residents of high social position.