“It was a hundred and sixty-four years ago, this very month that a tall and well-set young fellow of two and twenty ended in this town a toilsome journey, taken on foot from the neighborhood of Boston. He had come to make New Milford his home, bringing on his back the tools of his trade--that of a shoemaker--and with their aid he here gained for a year or two an honest livelihood. “A shoemaker and the son of a shoemaker, he had, and felt he had, capabilities for a larger work. His mind was already [Illustration: HONORABLE SIMEON E. BALDWIN Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Connecticut] set on that of a surveyor. For this, too, he fitted himself well; but there was that before him of which he did not think. He was to fill a long succession of official trusts, affecting all the Colonies and the States which succeeded them, to be bestowed upon him at a time of great events, and to be so well discharged as to make him one of the great figures of American history. “When Connecticut, a few years ago, was called upon by the nation to choose the two of her sons whose statues should be set in the Capitol at Washington, there could be no question as to one. The land of steady habits must, at all events, be represented in that place by Jonathan Trumbull, the War Governor of the Revolution,--the Brother Jonathan who typified to the nation the rugged virtues and hard good sense of the New England character. “The other statue also must belong to the same great era, the era which began with the struggle for independence, and closed with the attainment of settled constitutional government. Our heroes must be taken from that which above all others was our heroic age. Should we thus commemorate the impetuous gallantry of Putnam, the noble death of Hale, the courtly eloquence of Johnson, the judicial power of Ellsworth? All these were sons of Connecticut, born upon her soil. No. She chose one born and bred to manhood in another State; not trained at her college, nor at her schools; not at any schools. She sought to put the form and features of Roger Sherman into marble, to show to all time what qualities and achievements the people of Connecticut hold in most honor. This man, without eloquence, with no advantages of education, with no grace of manner, was her choice--taken from many, for solid qualities, not shining ones; for a life-long love of liberty, but only as it was regulated by law; for steadfast devotion to duty; for practical sagacity; for calm, and sound judgment in things both small and great. Such a character wears well. It is men of this stamp that have made Connecticut what she is.