In the winter of 1885 I made a trip to Montreal and returning by the Vermont Central made the discovery that the winter was a pretty dull season for business in Vermont, and that the railroad was in no haste to carry its passengers out of the state! We stopped for breakfast at St. Albans, and at Burlington were informed that we would have ample time to take a toboggan slide down the hill on which the town is built, and out a mile or so on the ice of lake Champlain, where sleighs were in attendance to return us to the hotel with our lungs well filled with Vermont oxygen: and at Middlebury which was reached when the short day was drawing to its close, we were informed that the stop was for the night. I found accommodations at the Addison House, whose long wind swept piazzas looked uninviting to the approaching stranger: but the section kept open for winter guests was comfortable and homelike. I improved the remaining daylight to make calls on relatives in the branch of the Seymours settled in that place—at the old Horatio Seymour homestead I found Mr. Philip Battell who was a brother of our Mr. Robbins Battell of Norfolk—while a law student at the old Litchfield School he became engaged to Emma Seymour, who was in Litchfield attending Miss Pierce’s School—after their marriage they made a part of Mr. Seymour’s household, who was then a widower and they lived and died at the homestead in Middlebury. Mr. Battell was very glad to see a Litchfield representative, and said that I had struck them at just the right time—that there was to be held at his house that evening a meeting of the Middlebury Historical Society to observe the Centennial Anniversary of the Addison County Court—whose first session was held one hundred years ago, that day, with the Hon. John Strong as the presiding Justice. Mr. Battell informed me that he had filled the office of Secretary of the Society since its organization, and that to warn the meetings and provide the banquet were among his duties. [Illustration: PL. LVI.—THE LITCHFIELD ACADEMY From original water-color, probably by Mr. Gimbrede, afterwards engraver in New York ]