When I told my father that we should name our boy for him, substituting Prescott for Gridley because the latter was such an ugly name, he replied very quietly that it belonged to a good old New England family. Boasting about one’s ancestry was so repugnant to him that he did not think proper to tell us that Richard Gridley had been a distinguished engineer during the Revolution, while Samuel, his grandfather and namesake, had served as captain in the former’s artillery regiment. Many times have I regretted not giving my son his grandfather’s full name. He has atoned for my failure to do so by calling _his_ son “Samuel Gridley.” I had an excellent nurse to take care of the children, but the youngest always slept in our room. With Sam we had some terrible moments, owing to our extreme zeal in tucking him up. As he disliked the process, he often waked up and gave tongue. One night my husband grew so desperate that he proposed taking the baby down to the dining-room, two flights below, and allowing him to cry until he was tired! In reality, he was a most affectionate parent, but this wild utterance relieved his feelings! I did groan sometimes about the loss of sleep. I remember with a blush that I foolishly made a complaint to a kinswoman of my husband’s, wife of the Mr. Grinnell who financed the Arctic Expedition. She was a calm, elderly lady who had borne nine children. It is to be feared that she thought David Hall’s wife was a grumbling young woman! At the time of our marriage my husband and I were not aware of any relationship existing between us. Some years later old General Greene, a devoted genealogist, proved to us that a distant kinsmanship existed through the Greenes. People of Rhode Island descent almost inevitably have ancestors belonging to this family. Like the Legion of Honor, it is hard to escape from. We had, also, a number of mutual relations, for two of his aunts, the Misses Eliza and Maria Hall, had married two of my greatuncles, Henry and William Ward. Evidently the families possessed mutual attraction. This did not prevent the two clans from taking a high attitude of impartial criticism each toward the other. I found, to my surprise, the traits which we had supposed to be Hall—and which we mildly criticized, were, on the contrary, Ward. They had been acquired by the Halls on their marriage with the latter family, so I was told!