or no street, but I took good care not to let him see me.
This splendid old person had been a classmate of John Quincy Adams at Harvard, and Mr. Adams told me afterwards that he remembered my grandfather as "the best-dressed man in college." "He used to wear a scarlet coat and knee - breeches, and was the strongest and best wrestler in college," says my authority. I imagine this coat had cost his mother many a hard bout of spinning and weaving, for this brave woman went to Boston twice a year on horseback with the products of her loom, that she might educate her oldest son, and proudly she dressed him well.
She and her husband, Robert Wilson, had come over from Ireland together, as children, in that first great emigration of the Scotch-Irish to America — those undismayed Presbyterians, who brought such noble gifts with them, and who became such important settlers for the new colonies. Robert Wilson, a relative of General Stark, fought in the Revolutionary war, and settled down, an impoverished man, in Peterboro, N. H.; but his brave wife, full of good blood, kept up the traditions of her English and Scotch ancestry. The eldest son must be educated — indeed, she educated two sons at Harvard, a feat of extraordinary valor in those days.
Both lived to honor her, and she lived to see them both in Congress, a fact which delighted her much. Her son James, my grandfather, saw the Capitol burned by the British. My father was a veritable Irishman, more Irish than Scotch, and he always reminded me, after I grew older, of the sketches of Grattan. His eloquence, which was marvellous, could make even a New Hampshire jury laugh and cry, and he became the leading
