Mr. Breck spent his boyhood in Boston, but his parents removed to Philadelphia in 1792 to escape what they felt was an unjust system of taxation. During the first years of their residence in the city of William Penn it had "a large society of elegant and fashionable and stylish people," Mr. Breck said in his diary. "Congress held its sessions in Philadelphia until the year 1800, and gave to the city the style and tone of a capital. All the distinguished emigrants from France took up their abode there." Among the associates of the Brecks were some of the leaders of the new nation. Samuel Breck was frequently at the Robert Morris house, and later, during the four years' imprisonment of Mr. Morris, he "visited that great man in the Prune Street debtors' apartment, and saw him in his ugly whitewashed vault." The diarist's comment was bitter: "In Rome or Greece a thousand statesmen would have honored his mighty services. In a monarchy ... he would have been appropriately pensioned; in America, Republican America, not a single voice was raised in Congress or elsewhere in aid of him or his family." There is not a more striking passage in the diaries than that written on August 27, 1814, during the second war with England: "I was in town to-day ... at half past twelve o'clock I went with an immense crowd to the post-office to hear the news from the South. The postmaster read it to us from a chamber window. It imported that the navy-yard had been burnt (valued at from six to eight millions of dollars) including the new frigate _Essex_, sloop-of-war _Argus_, some old frigates, a vast quantity of timber, from five to eight hundred large guns, and many manufactories of cordage, etc., by our people; that the President's House, Capitol, and other important buildings had been destroyed, and all this by a handful of men, say, six thousand!" The diary told also of some interesting experiences at the mansion on the Schuylkill. In 1807 "a newly invented iron grate calculated for coal" was installed at Sweetbrier. After less than three weeks' trial Mr. Breck wrote, "By my experiment in coal fuel I find that one fireplace will burn from three to three and a half bushels per week in hard weather and about two and a half in moderate weather. This averages three bushels for twenty-five weeks, the period of burning fire in parlors." The coal cost forty-five cents a bushel, and Mr. Breck decided that wood was a cheaper fuel. Even in those early days city families had their troubles with servants. "This is a crying evil, which most families feel very sensibly at present," was Mr. Breck's sorrowful statement. Fifteen years after this entry was written, a bitter complaint was made: