It is always a pleasure to visit the homes of eminent persons who long since have died. To look upon the scenes that they once beheld ; to walk in the paths that they once trod, is like coming into familiar intercourse with the intimate friend of the honored dead, and we go from the places hallowed by such associations with a sense of having gained almost a personal acquaintance with the great who there have had a habitation. The native town of Dr. Billy James Clark was beautiful old Northampton, in Massachusetts. Primitively Nonotuck of the Indians, it was venerable even on his birthday, January 4, 1778, and then, as now, it was foremost in culture and intelligence. Here, Jonathan Edwards had lived and labored, leaving upon the town an ineradicable impress of his saintly character and heavenly doctrines. Here, David Brainerd^ the zealous missionary to the Indians, broken in health, had died under the roof of Edwards, who had extended to him the loving hand of hospitality. Itwas eminently fitting that a life destined to exercise so profoundly beneficial an influence in promoting the higher estate of the race should have its beginning in a town so distinguished for its enlightenment and piety. Ithamar Clark, when his little son Billy was about six years old, left Northampton and took up his residence in Williamstown,

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Massachusetts, where also was the home of Mrs. Clark's father. For a period of four years the boy attended the school which afterwards developed into Williams College, at the end of which time the family changed its home to Pownal, Vermont. Of the details of the domestic life of the Clarks, we have no record. Nothing is known of the wife of Ithamar Clark, except that her maiden name was Sarah Simonds, and that she was a daughter of Benjamin Simonds, who had been a colonel in the Continental army, serving in the campaign against Burgoyne.