Benjamin Peirce

Charles Sanders Peirce 14 March 1909 to Victoria Welby

My father was universally acknowledged to be by far the strongest mathematician in the country, and was a man of great intellect and weight of character. All the leading men of science, particlarly astronomers and physicists resorted to our house ; so that I was brought up in an atmosphere of science. But my father was a borad man and we were intimate with literary people too. William Story the sculptor, Longfellow, James Lowell, Charles Norton, Wendell Holmes, and occasionally Emerson, are among the figures of my earliest memories. Among them I remember the italian Gallenga, who went by the name of Mariotte. The Quincy's we also knew very well, but not the Adams's. My mother's father had been a Senator in Washington. But his weak lungs having obliged him to retire, he set up a law school ; and in the way I used to see some of the most eminent of the political people, such as Webster. Bancroft had been very intimate with my mother's family, as in his old age he was a great friend of my wife here. I used occasionally to see him ; and Lothrop Motley was one of our friends. My father had strong contempts for certain men whom he considered shams, and anomg them was Charles Sumner, who was, I must say, one of the absurdest figures of vanity I ever laideyes on. Among the lawyers I remember Rufus Choate