“But Dr. Sheldon’s house is all right. Dear old Dr. Sheldon! We began to get well as soon as he came into the house; or, if the evil spirit delayed a little, ‘Cream-o’-tartar with hot water poured upon it and sweetened’ finished the work. He had learned, long before the days of homœopathy, that a doctor’s chief business is to keep parents from giving their children medicine, so that nature may have a fair chance at the disease without having its attention divided or diverted. “But now we stop before Miss Pierce’s—a name known in thousands of families, where gray-headed mothers remember the soft and gentle days of Litchfield schooling. The fine residence is well preserved, and time has been gentle within likewise. But the school-house is gone, and she that for so many years kept it busy is gone, and the throng that have crossed its threshold brood the whole globe with offices of maternal love. The Litchfield Law School in the days of Judge Tapping Reeve and Judge Gould, and Miss Pierce’s Female School, were in their day two very memorable institutions, and, though since supplied by others upon a larger scale, there are few that will have performed so much, if we take into account the earliness of the times and the fact that they were pioneers and parents of those that have supplanted them. But they are gone, the buildings moved off, and the ground smoothed and soft to the foot with green grass. No more shall the setting sun see Litchfield streets thronged with young gentlemen and ladies, and filling the golden air with laughter or low converse which, unlaughing then, made life musical for ever after! “But where is the Brace house? An old red house—red once, but picked by the winds and washed by rains till the color was neutral, thanks to the elements. The old elm-trees guard the spot, a brotherhood as noble as these eyes have ever seen, lifted high up, and in the part nearest heaven locking their arms together and casting back upon their separate trunks an undivided shade. So are many, separate in root and trunk, united far up by their heaven-touching thoughts and affections. “Mrs. Lord’s house is the only one now before we reach our own native spot. This, too, holds its own and is fertile in memories. Across the way lived Sheriff Landon, famous for dry wit and strong politics. “But south of him lived the greatest man in town, Mr. Parker, who owned the stages; and the wittiest man in town, with us boys, was Hiram Barnes, that drove stage for him! To be sure, neither of them was eminent for learning or civil influence, but, in that temple which boys’ imaginations make, a stage proprietor and a stage-driver stand forth as grand as Minerva in the Parthenon!