my native
town, of a man for murder. Trumbull was the judge, that Trumbull who
wrote "McFingal," and who, being elected for a single year, as was
then the rule, was re-elected as long as he lived. He was neatly
dressed, wearing ruffles in the bosom, and at the wrists, and was in
trim knee-breeches.

I remember this incident of the trial. The crowd was so great that the
court was adjourned from the court house to the church, then called the
meeting-house. The jurors sat in the square pews. One of the jurors, a
respectable farmer of the neighborhood, thinking that he had detected
some mistake of the counsel rose to correct him, when the counsel
retorted that the juror was the one mistaken, and added: "Let him that
thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." The prisoner was convicted
and was hanged at Middletown. I went up to see the execution, and when I
reached the place trained bands were marching through the streets,
playing their music as if for a great festivity. A sermon was preached
to a crowded house, and the prisoner was then taken, dressed in a
shroud, to a hill near by, and in the presence of thousands of
spectators was executed. These scenes were of course impressed strongly
on the memory of a boy. I remember the session of the county court at
Haddam, when the judges, headed by the sheriff, marched in order from
the tavern to the court house. I remember seeing in court David Daggett,
wearing white top boots, and I met Roger Minot Sherman, driving into the
village in a sulky. I remember Staples and Hungerford. The latter went
into court one day with a Bible under his arm, to show from the first
chapter of Genesis, as authority in an insurance case, that the day
began at sunset, "and the evening and the morning were the first day."

In those days party feeling ran high in Connecticut, between the
Democrats and the Federalists--"Demos" and "Feds," as they were called
for shortness--and contempt as well. Let me recount two anecdotes: The
Rev. Dr. Backus, riding along the highway, stopped at a brook to water
his horse, when another rider came up from the opposite side, and thus
addressed the good man: "Good-morning, Mr. Minister." The latter
replied, "Good-morning, Mr. Democrat. How did you know that I was a
minister?" "By your dress. How did you know that I was a Democrat?" "By
your address."

At another time Dr. Backus, being prosecuted for a libel upon Mr.
Jefferson, was taken from his home to Hartford to