years ago,—the first great man I had ever met, and to this day the greatest man I have ever known. I came to him with my burden of provincial bashfulness and awe; but how soon the feeling vanished in his kindly human presence! He gave the impression of as real a diffidence as my own; and from that moment, through more than three years of study with him,—much of the time alone with him alone,—his patience, kindness, generosity never failed. It went beyond all official obligations and courtesies; it concerned itself not only with the student, but with the man, and became a sort of providence, which kept on opening ways and smoothing paths for me as long as he lived. If this were merely an individual experience, I should speak of it with yet greater hesitation; but I believe it is typical. While we were with him, he was the masterfid yet sympathetic teacher, magnifying that office in our eyes with a supreme fidelity; and ever since, he has followed us with his beneficence and his affection.
Northampton bred many great preachers, but hardly another son whose life made more potently for righteousness; and at the last, in the serene beauty of his age, Heaven seemed to have set its halo on his head. Had the angel gone about New Haven in those days seeking a fit subject for the aureole, he could hardly have singled out any other than William Dwight Whitney.
