"This morning Mr. Lathrop of Boston called upon me. Soon after he came in I observed a remarkable cloud coming up and it appeared dark. The cloud was unusually brassy with little or no rain. Mr. Sewell and Colonel Wigglesworth came in. The darkness increased and by eleven o'clock it was so dark as to make it necessary to light candles ... at half-past eleven in a room with three large windows, southeast and south, could not read a word in large print close to windows .... About twelve it lighted up a little, then grew more dark.... At one o'clock very dark.... The windows being still open, a candle cast a shade so well defined on the wall that profiles were taken with as much ease as they could have been in the night. ... We dined about two, the windows all open and two candles burning on the table. In the time of the greatest darkness some of the dunghill fowls went to roost, cocks crowed in answer to one another, woodcocks, which are night birds, whistled as they do only in the dark, frogs peeped, in short there was the appearance of midnight at noonday.... At four o'clock it grew more light.... Between three and four we were out and perceived a strong sooty smell. Some of the company were confident a chimney in the neighborhood must be burning; others conjectured the smell was more like that of burnt leaves." These gentlemen went over to the tavern near by and found the people there greatly excited and tried to reassure them. They proved to them from the black ashes of leaves, which had settled like a scum on the rainwater standing in tubs, that the darkness was not supernatural, but probably came from the burning of forests far away. Dr. Ezra Stiles, who was then president of Yale College in New Haven, gave the same explanation. He says:-- "The woods about Ticonderoga [in New York] and eastward over to New Hampshire and westward into New York and the Jerseys were all on fire for a week before this Darkness and the smoke in the wilderness almost to suffocation. No rain since last fall, the woods excessively dry.... Such a profusion of settlers pushing back into the wilderness were everywhere clearing land and burning brush. This set the forests afire far beyond intention, so as to burn houses and fences.... The woods burned extensively for a week before the nineteenth of May and the wind all the while northerly." A quaint old ballad, said to have been written about that time, gives a description of this Dark Day:-- [Illustration: From Harper's Weekly, Copyright 1893. Copyright Harper and Brothers AN OLD CONNECTICUTT INN, 1790] "The Whip-poor-will sung notes most shrill, Doves to their cots retreated, And all the fowls, excepting owls, Upon their roosts were seated. "The herds and flocks stood still as stocks, Or to their folds were hieing, Men young and old, dared not to scold At wives and children crying.