“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 remained 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. “The law school of Judges Reeve and Gould, and the young ladies’ school of the Misses Pierce, made it an educational center scarcely second in the breadth of its influence to any in the land, and attracted a class of residents of high social position. “Its courts gathered from time to time some of the leading members of the bar from the whole country, not for a few hours, as now with our railroad facilities, but for days and weeks together. All these things help to create a very high order of public spirit—that force which often wholly unregarded, is yet so powerful in moulding the character and giving direction to the life.” One other element in this commercial influence must not be omitted—“Its intense patriotism.” “Litchfield” revisited, written in 1856 by Henry Ward Beecher: “The morning after our arrival in Litchfield we sallied forth alone. The day was high and wide, full of stillness and serenely radiant. As we carried our present life up the North Street, we met at every step our boyhood life coming down. There were the old trees, but looking not so large as to our young eyes. The stately road had, however, been bereaved of the buttonball trees, which had been crippled by disease. But the old elms retained a habit peculiar to Litchfield. There seemed to be a current of wind which at times passes high up in the air over the town, and which moves the tops of the trees, while on the ground there is no movement of wind. How vividly did that sound from above bring back early days, when for hours we lay upon the windless grass and watched the top leaves flutter, and marked how still were the under leaves of the same tree!