Silver Lydd." How many comforting concoctions and compounds, alternating
with herb-drinks and medicated potions, may have been quaffed or
swallowed with wry face from that precious old cup, who can now tell?
Probably it ministered its more inviting contents to the elders of the
successive generations in the family, while it was known by the younger
members in their turn in connection with certain penalties for
overeating and chills got from hard play. While having the relic in
hand, the other day, the prompting was irresistible to bring it close to
the appropriate organ, to ascertain, if possible, what had been the
predominant character of its contents. But, faithful as the grave, it
would reveal no secrets; having parted with all transient and artificial
odors, it has resumed, as is most fitting, the smell of its parent
earth.

The writer of that record accompanying the "Stone-Pot" with its "Silver
Lydd" was Adam Winthrop, father of our Governor, and son of the
last-mentioned Lord of Groton. This third Adam Winthrop--the sixth child
of his father's second wife, and the eleventh of his thirteen
children--was born in London, "in the street which is called Gracious,"
(Grace-Church,) August 10, 1548. Losing his father at the age of
fourteen, he was early bred as a lawyer in London, but soon engaged in
agricultural interests at Groton, to the lordship of which he acceded by
a license of alienation from an elder brother. There are sundry
authentic relics and tokens of this good man which reveal to us those
traits of his character, and those ways and influences of his domestic
life, under the high-toned, yet most genial training of which his son
was educated to the great enterprise Providence intended for him. There
are even poetical pieces extant which prove that Adam sought intercourse
with the Muses by making advances on his own part, though we must
confess that he does not appear to have been fairly met half-way by that