This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
252
LETTERS OF LIFE.

same patient devotedness to mercantile employment that he had formerly displayed in the requisitions of scholastic lore. In the first year of the present century, having attained his majority, he removed to Hartford and commenced the hardware business, which he pursued with unintermitting diligence and ability to the close of life. In his profession he was distinguished by accuracy, integrity, and knowledge of mankind; and in every department of action his public and private virtues had won the respect of the community. He married, at the age of twenty-three, a young lady from his native city, of uncommon loveliness and beauty, to whom he had been attached from early youth, receiving and imparting, for fifteen years, as pure conjugal happiness as appertains to our changeful humanity. She fell a victim to consumption, leaving three fair and interesting children to solace his mourning heart. A few years after his marriage he commenced attending the Episcopal Church, where he became a communicant, and ever continued to evince his devoted attachment by faithful and important services.

His native taste for literature and the fine arts was carefully cherished. He was a critical judge of pictures, and drew architecturally with precision and elegance. He was fond of history and the standard authors, but objected to the floating miscellanies of the day, as furnishing no nutritive aliment to the mind, and enervating its appetite for solidity. So elevated was