Among the household friends of our family I can remember Mr. John Vaughan, who had legends of Priestley, Berkeley, and Thomas Moore, and who often dined with us on Sunday. I can also recall his personal reminiscences of General Washington, Jefferson, and all the great men of the previous generation. He was a gentle and beautiful old man, with very courtly manners and snow-white hair, which he wore in a queue. He gave away the whole of a large fortune to the poor. Also an old Mr. Crozier, who had been in France through all the French Revolution, and had known Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier Tinville, &c. I wish that I had betimes noted down all the anecdotes I ever heard from them. There were also two old ladies, own nieces of Benjamin Franklin, who for many years continually took tea with us. One of them, Mrs. Kinsman, presented me with the cotton quilt under which her uncle had died. Another lady, Miss Louisa Nancrede, who had been educated in France, had seen Napoleon, and often described him to me. She told me many old French fairy-tales, and often sang a ballad (which I found in after years in the works of Cazotte), which made a great impression on me--something like that of "Childe Roland to the dark tower came." It was called _Le Sieur Enguerrand_, and the refrain was "_Oh ma bonne j'ai tant peur_." That these and many other influences of culture stirred me strangely even as a child, is evident from the fact that they have remained so vividly impressed on my memory. This reminds me that I can distinctly remember that when I was eight years of age, in 1832, my grandmother, Mrs. Oliver Leland, told my mother that the great German poet Goethe had recently died, and that they bade me remember it. On the same day I read in the _Athenaeum_ (an American reprint of leading articles, poems, &c., from English magazines, which grandmother took all her life long) a translation of Schiller's "Diver." I read it only once, and to this day I can repeat nearly the whole of it. I have now by me, as I write, a silver messenger-ring of King Robert, and I never see it without thinking of the corner of the room by the side-door where I stood when grandmother spoke of the death of Goethe. But I anticipate. My father was a commission merchant, and had his place of business in Market Street below Third Street. His partner was Charles S. Boker, who had a son, George, who will often be mentioned in these Memoirs. George became in after life distinguished as a poet, and was Minister for many years at Constantinople and at St. Petersburg.