Memoirs | Page 4

a branch of education, in which I eventually succeeded, devoting to the work there four years, applying myself so assiduously as to neglect both society and amusements, and not obtaining, nor seeking for, pay or profit thereby in any way, directly or indirectly. And if I have, as I have read, since then "expatriated" myself, my whole absence has not been much longer than was that of Washington Irving, and I trust to be able to prove that I have "left my country for my country's good"--albeit in a somewhat better sense than that which was implied by the poet.
And I may here incidentally mention, with all due modesty, that since the foregoing paragraph came to me "in revise," I received from Count Angelo di Grubernatis a letter, beginning with the remark that, in consequence of my gentile ed insistence premura, or "amiable persistence, begun four-years ago," he has at length carried out my idea and suggestion of establishing a great Italian Folklore Society, of which I am to rank as among the first twelve members. This is the fourth institution of the kind which I have been first, or among the first, to found in Europe, and it has in every case been noted, not without surprise, that I was an American. Such associations, being wide-reaching and cosmopolitan, may be indeed considered by every man of culture as patriotic, and I hope at some future day that I shall still further prove that, as regards my native country, I have only changed my sky but not my heart, and laboured for American interests as earnestly as ever.
CHARLES GODFREY LELAND.
BAGNI DI LUCCA, ITALY, August 20, 1893.

I. EARLY LIFE. 1824-1837.
My birthplace--Count Bruno and Dufief--Family items--General Lafayette--The Dutch witch-nurse--Early friends and associations--Philadelphia sixty years ago--Early reading--Genealogy--First schools--Summers in New England--English influences--The Revolutionary grandfather--Centenarians--The last survivor of the Boston Tea-party and the last signer of the Declaration--Indians--Memories of relations--A Quaker school--My ups and downs in classes--Arithmetic--My first ride in a railway car--My marvellous invention--Mr. Alcott's school--A Transcendental teacher--Rev. W. H. Furness--Miss Eliza Leslie--The boarding-school near Boston--Books--A terrible winter--My first poem--I return to Philadelphia.
I was born on the 15th of August, 1824, in a house which was in Philadelphia, and in Chestnut Street, the second door below Third Street, on the north side. It had been built in the old Colonial time, and in the room in which I first saw life there was an old chimney-piece, which was so remarkable that strangers visiting the city often came to see it. It was, I believe, of old carved oak, possibly mediaeval, which had been brought from some English manor as a relic. I am indebted for this information to a Mr. Landreth, who lived in the house at the time. {1}
It was then a boarding-house, kept by a Mrs. Rodgers. She had taken it from a lady who had also kept it for boarders. The daughter of this latter married President Madison. She was the well-known "Dolly Madison," famous for her grace, accomplishments, and belle humeur, of whom there are stories still current in Washington.
My authority informed me that there were among the boarders in the house two remarkable men, one of whom often petted me as a babe, and took a fancy to me. He was a Swedish Count, who had passed, it was said, a very wild life as pirate for several years on the Spanish Main. He was identified as the Count Bruno of Frederica Bremer's novel, "The Neighbours." The other was the famous philologist, Dufief, author of "Nature Displayed," a work of such remarkable ability that I wonder that it should have passed into oblivion.
My mother had been from her earliest years devoted to literature to a degree which was unusual at that time in the United States. She had been, as a girl, a special protegee of Hannah Adams, the author of many learned works, who was the first person buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery of Boston. She directed my mother's reading, and had great influence over her. My mother had also been very intimate with the daughters of Jonathan Russell, the well-known diplomatist. My maternal grandfather was Colonel Godfrey, who had fought in the war of the Revolution, and who was at one time an aide-de-camp of the Governor of Massachusetts. He was noted for the remarkable gentleness of his character. I have heard that when he went forth of a morning, all the animals on his farm would run to meet and accompany him. He had to a miraculous degree a certain sympathetic power, so that all beings, men included, loved him. I have heard my mother say that as a girl she had a tame crow who was named Tom, and that he could distinctly cry the word "What?" When Tom was walking about in