Note A — PART FIRST.

Not only the storms of two hundred and thirty years, but the bolts of heaven, have beat in vain upon this mansion. The view given of it in the frontispiece is from a sketch taken in winter. The leafless branches of a tall elm at its western end are represented. At noon on Saturday, July 28, 1866, during a violent thunder-storm, the electric fluid seems to have passed down the tree, rending and tearing some of its branches, and leaving its traces on the trunk. It flashed into the house. It tore the roof, knocking away one corner, displacing in patches the mortar that coated the old chimney top and sides, hacking the edges of the brick-work, splitting off the side of an extension to the building at the western end, entering a chamber at that point, where two children were sitting at a window, and throwing upon the floor, within two or three feet of them, a considerable portion of the plastered ceiling. It then scattered all through the apartments. What looked like perforations, as if made by shot or pistol-balls, were found in many places; but there were no corresponding marks on the opposite sides of the walls or partitions. Portions of the paper-hangings were stripped off, and small slivers ripped up from the floors. It struck the frames of looking-glasses, cracking off small pieces of the wood, but only in one instance breaking the mirror. It cut a velvet band by which one was hung; and it was found on the floor, the mirror downward and unbroken, as if it had been carefully laid there. In the attic, fragments of the old gnarled and knotted rafters, of different lengths,—from four or five feet to mere chips,—were scattered in quantities upon the floor, and grooves made lengthwise along posts and implements of household use. Large cracks were left in the wooden casings of some of the doors and windows. A family of eight persons were seated around the dinner-table. All were more or less affected. They were deprived for the time of the use of their feet and ancles; were stunned, paralyzed, and rendered insensible for a few moments by the shock; and felt the effects, some of them, for a day or two in their lower limbs. In front of each person at the table was a tall goblet, which had just been filled with water. As soon as they were able to notice, they found the water dripping on all sides to the floor, the whole table-cloth wet, seven of the goblets entirely empty, the eighth half emptied, and not one of them thrown over, or in the slightest manner displaced. The whole house was filled with what seemed, to the sight and smell, to be smoke; but no combustion, scorch, discoloration, or the least indication of heat, could be found on any of the objects struck. The building, in its thirteen rooms, from the garret to the ground-floor, had been flooded with lightning; but, with all its inmates, escaped without considerable or permanent injury.