industry and trade.

The glorious family of cotemporaneous plants from which I derive my
being, grew in a lovely vale of Connecticut, and quite near to the banks
of the celebrated river of the same name. This renders us strictly
Yankee in our origin, an extraction of which I find all who enjoy it fond
of boasting. It is the only subject of self-felicitation with which I am
acquainted that men can indulge in, without awakening the envy of their
fellow-creatures; from which I infer it is at least innocent, if not
commendable.

We have traditions among us of the enjoyments of our predecessors, as
they rioted in the fertility of their cis-atlantic field; a happy company of
thriving and luxuriant plants. Still, I shall pass them over, merely
remarking that a bountiful nature has made such provision for the
happiness of all created things as enables each to rejoice in its existence,
and to praise, after its fashion and kind, the divine Being to which it
owes its creation.

{cis-atlantic = this side of the Atlantic (Latin)}

In due time, the field in which my forefathers grew was gathered, the
seed winnowed from the chaff and collected in casks, when the whole
company was shipped for Ireland. Now occurred one of those chances
which decide the fortunes of plants, as well as those of men, giving me a
claim to Norman, instead of Milesian descent. The embarkation, or
shipment of my progenitors, whichever may be the proper expression,
occurred in the height of the last general war, and, for a novelty, it
occurred in an English ship. A French privateer captured the vessel on
her passage home, the flaxseed was condemned and sold, my ancestors