"The old books would (for the most part) have been worth nothing at an auction. They possessed an interest quite apart from their literary value; many of them had been transmitted down through a series of consecrated hands from the days of the mighty Puritan divines. A few of the books were Latin folios written by Catholic authors; others demolished papistry as with a sledgehammer, in plain English. A dissertation on the book of Job, which only Job himself could have had the patience to read, filled at least a score of small, thick-set quartos, at the rate of two or three volumes to a chapter. Then there was a vast folio 'Body of Divinity.' Volumes of this form dated back two hundred years and more, and were generally bound in black leather, exhibiting precisely such an appearance as we should attribute to books of enchantment. Others equally antique were of a size proper to be carried in the large waistcoat pockets of old times: diminutive, but as black as their bulkier brethren. These little old volumes impressed me as if they had been intended for very large ones, but had been, unfortunately, blighted at an early stage of their growth. Then there were old newspapers, and still older almanacs, which reproduced the epochs when they had issued from the press with a distinctness that was altogether unaccountable. It was as if I had found bits of magic looking-glass among the books, with the images of a vanished century in them."
We lingered long in the Library, and in the Indian Room, where stands an old door gashed by the tomahawks of the Indians who, with a company of French, in 1704, surprised Deerfield, massacred a great part of the inhabitants, and carried a hundred and twelve as prisoners to Canada. Yellow and crumbling letters, uncertainly spelled and quaintly phrased, hung around the room, telling how perilous such a driving-tour as we had just taken would have been in those pioneer days. One, dated 1756 and written to Captain John Burt in the Crown Point Army, read as follows:
"It is a Crasie time in this place. There is but little Traviling by the Massachusetts Fort which makes it more difficult to send letters. Capt. Chapin and Chidester and his Son were killed and scalpt by the Enemy near the new foort at Hoosack."