He had thought it likely the Acton people would ask him to speak.

But they did not.

As he was riding back in the chaise, he said if they had asked him to speak, he had it in mind to give as a toast, "The blessed Memory of the Pilgrim Fathers, who first landed at Acton." He was especially fond of boys, and they of him.

When he died, every schoolboy thought he had lost a friend.

One had a knife and another a book or a picture which he prized, and another a pair of skates which Charles Emerson had given him.