The Reminiscences Of James Burrill Angell/ChapterI
REMINISCENCES OF JAMES BURRILL ANGELL
I
FROM BIRTH TO GRADUATION
1829-1849
I WAS born in Scituate, Rhode Island, on January 7, 1829. My parents were Andrew Aldrich Angell and Amy Aldrich Angell. They were remotely related. I am the oldest of eight children, two of whom died in infancy. I am the lineal descendant, of the seventh generation, from Thomas Angell who, an Englishman by birth, came, in 1631, to Massachusetts with Roger Williams, and, in 1636, accompanied Williams when the latter settled on the spot to which he gave the name of Providence. Thomas Angell was one of the signers of the noted compact to which Rhode Islanders have always looked back with pride, as the first instrument of pure democracy, which leaves absolute freedom in matters of religious concern.
In 1675, as is learned from the Providence Early Records, lands on the west side of the so-called Seven Mile Line were assigned to several men. Among them was Thomas Angell. His grandson and name-sake, Thomas, appears to have settled in 1710 on the farm on which I was born.
The town was incorporated in 1731. Why the name Scituate was given to it is not clear. It has been thought by some it was because it was partly settled by emigrants from Scituate, Massachusetts. But I have never heard of but one settler from that place. We know that the Massachusetts antiquarians believe that the name is Indian, being written Setuat, or nearly in that form, and signifying Cold Brooks.' It is not improbable that the site of the town in Rhode Island bore a similar Indian name, and was anglicized like that in Massachusetts by the form Scituate.
The land, or a portion of it, on which Thomas settled, was held and occupied continuously by his descendants until after the death of my father in 1864. Representatives of the Angell family are numerous in Rhode Island, where in the main they have' remained. They have been found chiefly in the ranks of plain farmers, mechanics and tradesmen, gaining by industry and integrity an honest living, but winning no particular distinction. Those best known, perhaps, are Col. Israel Angell, who commanded in a creditable manner a regiment in the Revolution, and Joseph Kinnicutt Angell, whose books on law gave him some eminence in the last generation. Nearly always some of them have been found in the State Legislature.
My immediate ancestors, like many of the farmers of former days who lived on some important thoroughfare, combined the business of tavern-keeping with that of farming. At an early day the Providence and Norwich Turnpike Company, whose road passed through our farm, was chartered. The farmers of several towns in eastern Connecticut then marketed their products in Providence and so travelled the turnpike road. During the War of 1812, much of the travel and transportation by land between Boston and New York went by this route. Good inns were therefore needed. Through the period of my boyhood the number of travellers who sought accommodations in the spacious house which my grandfather erected in 1810, was very considerable. In earlier days, the town meetings were held at the tavern. In my own time, the military gatherings—the "General Trainings"—were held in the intervales near by; political meetings, occasionally a justice's court, were held in a large hall which formed a part of the house. Compared with the seclusion of the ordinary farmer's boy's life, it will readily be seen that life here was very stirring. I have always felt that the knowledge of men I gained by the observations and experiences of my boyhood in the country tavern has been of the greatest service. Human nature could be studied in every variety, from that of the common farm labourer to travellers of the highest breeding and refinement. The eminent political speakers were always entertained at our table, and some of them were very helpful friends in my later life. If, as I have sometimes been assured, I have any power of adaptation to the society of different classes of men, I owe it in no small degree to these varied associations of my boyhood.
I began my education by learning my alphabet from an old law book. My grand-father had been Justice of the Peace, and therefore had this volume, each chapter of which began with a very large capital letter. Under the guidance of my uncle, I learned these letters. That fact is my earliest recollection. I recall with especial distinctness the large J, as I was made to understand that it was the initial of my name.
I may remark in passing that my name was given me by my step-grandfather, who was an admirer of James Burrill, an early United States Senator from Rhode Island.
At a very early age (I know not how early), I was sent to the District School. I remember that I was so young that my father used frequently to take me to school on horseback in front of him on the saddle. A large boy of the neighbourhood was hired to take charge of me on the road when I walked. The district school was then in a very primitive state. A sloping board attached to the wall quite around the room was the writing desk for all the larger pupils. They sat on benches with their backs towards. the middle of the room. The small scholars sat on low benches in the centre of the room. Those who wrote made their own writing books. They purchased unruled paper, cut it into leaves, stitched them together, put a rough brown paper cover on, and ruled the lines with a leaden plummet. The first duty in the morning was to mend the goose-quill pens, and in the winter to thaw the ink on the stove. The highest branch was Daboll's Arithmetic, and the older pupils who had completed it one winter came back the next and "ciphered through it" again. Reading, spelling, writing, a little grammar, elementary geography, and arithmetic, furnished the whole curriculum.
Fortunately for me, when I was about eight years of age a Quaker, Isaac Fiske, came to the neighbourhood, and established a school for boarders and for day scholars, and I was placed under his care. He was a most thorough, painstaking, and exacting teacher. He had little class-work. His instruction was personal. He went round from pupil to pupil to render needed assistance in solving mathematical problems. When we had completed them he required us to copy our work neatly into manuscript books. I remained with him four years, and not only completed arithmetic, but studied surveying also. As he did not teach foreign languages, ancient or modern, he advised my parents to place me in some school where I might study Latin. But, for the thoroughness of his instruction I have always felt under deep obligations to him.
Some boys whom I knew were attending a seminary in Seekonk, Massachusetts, about three miles from Providence, and urged me to come there. It was a great trial to my mother to have me leave home; but it was decided that I ought to go. I was then twelve years old. On arriving at the school, I found that in arithmetic I was far ahead of the boys of my age, and so it was wisely concluded that I should give my whole time to Latin. And this experiment of intensive study, carried on in a rational way, had a very interesting result. The principal put me in charge of his sister, a very intelligent woman. He had been drilling a class of older boys two years on the dry rules of Latin grammar, without letting them read much Latin. The sister gave me a small book containing the paradigms and easy reading lessons. I met her twice a day, finished the book, and by the end of the three months' term was able to join the class of older boys in such reading as was then set for them, and to go on with them without difficulty.
After I had spent one term at this school, my parents decided to send me to the Smithville Seminary, an Academy which the Freewill Baptists had established in the northern part of my own town, only five miles from my home.
The two principal instructors, Rev. Hosea Quinby, a graduate of Waterville College, Maine, and Mr. S. L. Weld, a graduate of Brown University, were familiar with the traditional methods of the New England Academy. Without being eminent scholars, they had the faculty of interesting, and to a fair degree of stimulating, their pupils. Most of these were farmers' sons and daughters who wished to supplement the limited work of the district schools. A small number were preparing themselves for college. I joined them in their classes with no such purpose distinctly formed. I also took nearly all the scientific instruction which was given, and given as well as it could be without laboratories or much apparatus. Many of the students were men in years. They were diligent students. Some of them were awkward and rustic in manners, but they were thoroughly earnest and gave a good tone to the school.
The best instruction, and that was the case in such schools generally, was in mathematies. I pushed on through algebra and plane and solid geometry. English was taught by the stupid method of parsing "Pope's Essay on Man" and that dolorous book, "Pollock's Course of Time." The ideals of writing and speaking which were in vogue were greatly wanting in simplicity and directness. The instruction in the classics, while it would not now be regarded as sufficiently critical, encouraged and enabled us to read rapidly enough to get real enjoyment from the author. We soon caught the swing and the flow of the Virgilian verse, so that we read with genuine delight in the last six books of the AEneid at the rate of three hundred lines a day. The poem was not made a mere frame-work on which to hang puzzling questions in grammar, but read as a poem which we were to enjoy as we did Scott's " Marmion " or the " Lady of the Lake." That method may be deemed old-fashioned by modern doctors of philosophy; but I have always been very grateful that under that method my first acquaintance with Virgil was not dull task-work, but the source of constant delight.
As I look back on the work done in the dead or moribund academies of New England which have been supplanted by the well-appointed high school, I am convinced that, with their many defects, due in large part to inadequate means, they rendered a most valuable service. They prepared teachers for the district schools, young men for business, and a limited number to meet the moderate requirements which were asked in that time for admission to college. We are in danger of underrating the value of their work.
While during my fourteenth year I was at school at the Academy, Mr. O. S. Fowler, a somewhat noted phrenologist of that day, gave some lectures in the village of North Scituate and made a professional "examination" of my head. I still have his writ-ten report on me. It was ridiculous in its exaggerated estimate of my gifts, but it had one good result. He persuaded my relatives and friends that by study I was overtaxing my strength, and that I ought to leave school for a time and lead a vigorous out-of-door life. While I was by no means ill, I have little doubt that I owe in some degree the physical vigour with which I have been blessed all my life to the fact that owing to his counsel I spent the next two seasons, from early spring till late autumn, at work upon my father's farm, side by side with his hired men, hoeing my row and mowing my swath and learning all the details of farm work. Much of this I had previously learned in vacations; but I now learned thoroughly how much back-ache a dollar earned in the fields represented. I was also enabled to see how the world looks from the point of view of the labouring man. Often in later years, when weary with study, I was inspired with new zeal by recalling how much severer were the fatigue and monotony of the work of the farmer's boy. It is a good fortune for a boy to have known by experience what hard and continuous manual labour means.
The life in my native town during the years of my boyhood was much like that in the other rural towns of Rhode Island. It was very simple and frugal. The population was of pure English descent. I think my father within the period of my recollection brought the first Irish maid-servant into the town. Farming was the chief occupation. There were half-a-dozen cot-ton factories of moderate size scattered through the town; but the operatives were drawn from the farms and were all Americans. The farmers got their limited supply of money from the sale chiefly of wood, char-coal, and potatoes, in Providence, and of milk and butter to the operatives in the mills. Some added to their income by turning bobbins and spools in the winter in small shops erected on little streams upon their farms. They found a ready market for their products in the cotton factories through the State. The practice of the greatest economy was necessary to make a small farm support a family. In 1840 the census-taker permitted me to accompany him in his gig over a large part of the town. I think we entered only two or three houses which had any other carpets or rugs than those which the occupants had made from rags. I believe that there were not more than two pianos in the town. There was no public library; there were very few books in private libraries. Although the town was only twelve miles from Brown University, I was the first boy from Scituate to graduate from the college. But there had always been in the town some men of prominence in public affairs. Stephen Hopkins, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, lived there. In my own time, one governor of the State and one lieutenant-governor resided there; but the great mass of the inhabitants were hard-working farmers, who led toilsome, honest lives, and left little to their children beyond the inheritance they had received from their parents. If the children were now willing to practise the same industry and frugality they could live with equal comfort upon the farms. But they are rapidly selling them to the Irish and the French, who are willing to practise even greater economy than the fathers did two generations back, and so are living in comparative thrift. The change in the type of population is marked, as it is in most of the rural towns of New England, perhaps even more so, since the operatives in the factories are now almost all of foreign birth.
The amusements of the country folk were few and simple. Perhaps the most generally attractive was the annual visit to the shore of Narragansett Bay, usually at a place called the Buttonwoods, where, under the shade of some sycamore trees, they made a clambake after the manner of the Indians. They first gathered the clams from the sand laid bare by the receding tide or the quahog from the adjacent waters. They built a fire on stones and heated them thoroughly; and then placing the shell-fish and potatoes and ears of corn on the stones they covered the whole with sea-weed, and the cooking was slowly done. While the roasting was going on, a bath in the sea was enjoyed by all who wished it.
The clam or quahog, held in the hand, was dipped in a cup of melted butter and eaten with a relish which no participant in one of those out-of-door feasts will ever forget.
Every farmer was expected to take his family and his hired men "to the shore" at least once, when the haying season was over. At the time of the August full moon the roads were well filled with these pilgrims to the sea. Occasionally a party of neighbours, numbering fifteen or twenty, hired a large sail boat at Apponaug or East Greenwich, and after the clambake sailed down the bay to Hope Island, spent the night there, and rose at dawn to fish. Occasionally the dullness of the winter was enlivened by a ball at some one of the taverns in the town; but the life was upon the whole monotonous, and constant toil was relieved by few amusements.
Probably, owing to the reaction among the early settlers of Rhode Island from the Puritanical spirit of their neighbours in Massachusetts and Connecticut, Sunday was not generally kept as it was in those States. It was the day for visiting relatives and friends and largely for fishing and hunting and ball-playing. It may truthfully be said that the factory operatives had no other time for visiting or for pleasure.
The most numerous religious bodies in our part of the State were the Six Principle Baptists and the Freewill Baptists. The preachers of the former denomination were all men of limited education; so were most of the preachers of the latter. Naturally enough, the men of the most intelligence and influence rarely attended church, and the spiritual life of the town was at a rather low ebb. But the general standard of morals would compare well with that of the present day. Drunkenness and gambling were not prevalent. A man supposed to be addicted to gambling or to licentiousness could not retain the public esteem. Political life was purer than it has been of late years in the State.
The language of the people retained some peculiar expressions which must have come from England, and which I have heard rarely or not at all in other parts of our country. Thus after a wedding it was customary for the parents of the bride to give a party. That party was always spoken of as the onfare. Whether that is the proper spelling I cannot say, as I never saw it in print. It would seem to come from the word fare in the sense to travel. The occasion was, therefore, a sort of God-speed, to send the married couple faring on their way.
Again, if a candidate for office was going about, buttonholing men and soliciting support, he was said to be "parmateering." It has occurred to me that that word might be an abbreviation of Parliamenteering, if that form was ever used to signify going about seeking support for parliament. An auction was generally spoken of as a vendue, pronounced vandue. That word borrowed from the French was used in England.
Up to the time I left the Academy I had no fixed plan for life. My teachers had encouraged me to believe that I could succeed in college studies. But, although at the age of fourteen I had covered more ground, especially in Latin and mathematics, than was required for admission to any of the New England colleges, I had no definite purpose of going to college. During the summers I was at home on the farm. I made some unsuccessful efforts to secure a clerkship in business establishments in Providence; but in my fifteenth year it was clear that I ought to decide what career I should endeavour to follow. My father informed me that he was able and willing to send me to college, but in that case would hardly be able, in justice to my five brothers and sisters, to aid me further.
It was left to me to say whether I should go. I was certain that it would gratify both him and my mother if I chose to take the college life, and so the die was cast.
Conscious that in my somewhat prolonged absence from school my knowledge of the classics had become rather rusty, and being still a year below the age set for entering Brown University, I spent the larger part of a school year in the University Grammar School in Providence. It was then conducted by Mr. Merrick Lyon and Mr. Henry S. Frieze, afterwards the distinguished Professor of Latin in the University of Michigan. My studies were mainly in the classes of the latter. Contact with this inspiring teacher formed an epoch in my intellectual life, as in that of so many other boys. He represented the best type of the modern teacher, at once critical as a grammarian and stimulating with the finest appreciation of whatever was choicest in the classic masterpieces. At first, as we were showered with questions such as I had never heard before, it seemed to me, although the reading of the Latin was mainly a review to me, that I should never emerge from my state of ignorance. But there was such a glow of enthusiasm in the instructor and in the class, there was such delight in the tension in which we were kept by the daily exercises, that no task seemed too great to be encountered. Though in conjunction with our reading we devoured the Latin grammar so that by the end of the year we could repeat almost the whole of it, paradigms, rules, and exceptions without prompting, the work of mastering it did not seem dry and onerous, for we now felt how the increasing accuracy of our knowledge of the structure of the language enhanced our enjoyment of the Virgil and the Cicero, whose subtle and less obvious charms we were aided by our teacher to appreciate.
I here interrupt the sketch of my education in school to speak of an important event in 1842, which awakened a deep and a permanent interest in me in political and constitutional questions: I refer to what is known in Rhode Island history as the Dorr war.
Rhode Island retained the very liberal charter she had received from Charles II as her Constitution down to 1843. Under that Constitution the right of suffrage was limited to the owners of land of the value of at least one hundred and thirty-four dollars and to the oldest sons of such land-holders. So long as the people of the State were engaged mainly in farming, in commerce and in whale fishing, there was no serious discontent with this limitation of the suffrage. But after the War of 181e, manufacturing, especially the manufacture of cotton, grew up rapidly in the State. By 1840 the operatives and the mechanics in the State, who had no right to vote, were a numerous body. Naturally enough they sought an amendment to the Constitution which would permit them to have a voice in choosing their rulers; but they sought in vain. There, as everywhere, the exclusive possessors of power preferred to retain it. Therefore the petitioners, seeing no possibility of securing an amendment to the constitution in accordance with the method provided by it, called a convention to frame such a constitution as they desired, nominated officers to be voted for at the same time the constitution was submitted to be adopted or rejected by those on whom this new constitution conferred the privilege of suffrage. The supporters of the State government mainly absented themselves from the polls. The new constitution was declared by its friends to be adopted. Thomas W. Dorr, a most worthy and capable man, belonging to one of the most respectable families of Providence, was said to be elected governor. He at once laid claim to the office and demanded possession of the State property. Then his subordinate officers attempted to take possession. Governor King resisted, and so an armed conflict came on. Those who supported the regular State authorities were known as the Law and Order Party, and the opponents as the Dorrites.
I am not to recite the detailed history of the strife, which resulted in the defeat of the Dorrites and in the trial, conviction, and imprisonment of Mr. Dorr on the charge of treason. It also led the victors to see that the time had come for enlarging the suffrage. They made a new and more liberal constitution, under which by the payment of a small registry or poll tax the suffrage was opened to all citizens of American birth.
But the issue which was raised by the original contest was one of great constitutional interest and importance and was made so plain that we schoolboys could comprehend it clearly enough to discuss it in our essays and debates in school, though I believe great constitutional lawyers are not yet fully agreed upon the decision of the fundamental question involved. The question is whether the citizens of a State have a right to call a convention and adopt a constitution by any other method than that prescribed in the Constitution already in force. This was, of course, decided in the negative in Rhode Island.
The feeling of opposition between the two parties in the state was almost as acute as that between the Union men and the Confederates in the Border States during the Civil War. My father was a Law and Order man, and a member of the Legislature during the troubles. The people who lived near us in the adjoining factory village were all Dorrites. They gave us to understand that they would not aid us to extinguish the flames if our house took fire. We happened to be building a large addition to our kitchen that year. They dubbed it the Algerine kitchen, as their favourite name for their opponents was Algerines, because of the alleged cruelty of the State officials towards the prisoners they took. The family adopted the name for the kitchen, and it was known as "the Algerine" so long as the house stood. As in the South after the Civil War, the women retained their animosities much longer than the men. The Dorr War affected permanently the political division of men in the State. The Democrats in other States generally sympathized with Mr. Dorr. Therefore most of the Rhode Island Democrats (of whom my father was one) who opposed him, and they were numerous, subsequently acted with the Whig party during the remaining years of the existence of that party. I therefore grew up with an inherited attachment to the Whigs, save that like most of the Brown University students I was led by President Wayland's instructions to doubt the wisdom or justice of protective tariffs.
My college life covered the period from 1845 to 1849. In these days, when the faculty numbers nearly a hundred, it is difficult to comprehend how a faculty of seven men carried on the institution with vigour and success. I need hardly say that each one of the seven was a man of force and was admirably qualified for his special work.
The youngest was Professor Lincoln. He had recently returned from Germany, where he had pursued extended studies in the classics and in philosophy. We had the pleasure of reading Livy with him while he was preparing his edition of that author. He was, therefore, brimful of enthusiasm on the subject and fired us with much of his own spirit. Although we were studying a dead language, no classroom was more alive than this. He was intolerant of sluggishness or laziness, and often rebuked it with a stinging word. "I have for-gotten," said an indolent fellow one day in reply to a question. "Forgotten," was the sharp retort of the teacher, "did you ever know?" One answer given him amused him and the class as affording rich material for his notes on Livy. We were reading the twenty-first chapter, which describes the passage of the Alps by Hannibal. The professor asked one of the class why Hannibal had the elephants with him. With great promptness the answer came, "to draw up his cannon." The youth who made the reply was so chaffed by his class-mates that he left Brown and went to another college.
Professor Boise, who afterwards at the University of Michigan and the Chicago Theological Seminary won so high a reputation, had charge of the Greek. He manifested the same philological acumen which always distinguished him. But he seemed to us at that time to dwell too much on the minutie of grammar, and not enough on the beauties of Greek literature. The current saying among us was that "he would die for an enclitic." But it is impossible to overstate the influence which he and his colleague, Professor Frieze, exerted in the West through their labours at the University of Michigan in diffusing love for the study of the ancient classics.
The librarian, Professor Charles C. Jewett, who had been in Europe purchasing books for the library, had charge of the instruction in French in my sophomore year. He was greatly beloved by the students. It was with much regret that we saw him accept the post of librarian of the Smithsonian Institution. He afterwards became the librarian of the Boston Public Library, and died at a comparatively early age.
Fortunately his place in the classroom was taken by George W. Greene, the well-known historical scholar. His life had been chiefly spent in Europe. The revolutions of 1848 were raging while we were under him. Greatly to our delight, and I may add to our profit, his time in the classroom, under the provocation of questions from us, was chiefly spent in discussing European affairs, and especially in describing the eminent persons who were conducting the military or political movements. Not a few of these he knew personally. None of us, who hung upon his lips in these hours, can ever forget his narratives. He had the art of the best French raconteur. I confess that my own intense interest in European politics and history dates from the hours I sat under the spell of George Greene's fine talk. And who of our American writers has surpassed him in a pure and flowing English style? I am sure the inspiration of the contact with so finished a scholar was lost on but few of the class, even though the demands for the details of recitation were not very exacting.
Professor Gammell had charge of our writing and speaking and also of the work in history. He maintained the tradition of pure and chaste writing which, established under Professor Goddard, has, I am happy to believe, never been lost at Brown. He was most exacting in his demands upon the writers, and no one willingly subjected himself to the humour and the stings of his pungent criticism. Even those who could not at the time receive them with complacency lived to recognize in them with gratitude "the wounds of a friend." No teacher rejoiced more than he in the success of his students in life or watched their careers with more interest. His course in history was fuller than that at any other college except Harvard. It was chiefly devoted to English constitutional history, though some time was given to American constitutional history. It called for solid and fruitful work.
According to the custom of those days in all the colleges, one man was called to give instruction in several sciences. This man was Professor Chace. He taught chemistry, geology, botany, and physiology. At times he also conducted classes in Butler's Analogy. He really ought to have been assigned to the teaching of philosophy. His natural bent was towards metaphysics. His mind was singularly acute, his mental processes were most logical; his style of expression was absolutely lucid. His instruction was, therefore, highly appreciated, though from the brevity of the courses he could give us only elementary instruction in science. Laboratories had not then been introduced anywhere in this country. His opinion on any subject carried great weight with the students. It was generally believed that no one could outwit him by any trick or device. Therefore the vain attempt was seldom made.
Professor Caswell, who gave instruction in mathematics, astronomy, and natural philosophy, had of all the teachers the strongest hold on the affections of the students. To him every one who needed sympathy or counsel instinctively went. His great warm heart drew all to him. He had the gift of making mathematics attractive to most students, and even tolerable to that inconsiderable number who had no gift or no taste for the study. When the vote on recommending for degrees was to be taken, he looked with abundant charity on those who had never been able to pass the examinations in mathematics, saying amiably, "Let them pass. The conies are a feeble folk." The impress of his beautiful character upon all the students was never forgotten or entirely effaced.
President Wayland taught us intellectual and moral philosophy, political economy, and (in a brief course) the evidences of Christianity. I have met not a few of the men whom the world has called great; but I have seldom met a man who so impressed me with the weight of his personality as did Dr. Wayland. After making due allowance for the fact that I was but a youth when I sat under his teaching, I still think that by his power of intellect, of will, and of character, he deserved to be ranked with the strongest men our country has produced. It may be said of him as of his friend, Mark Hopkins, that his published writings do not adequately represent the man as his pupils knew him. As a teacher he was unsurpassed. His power of analyzing a subject into its simple elements and his power of happy illustration, often humorous, were equally marked. One-fourth of my classmates were Southerners. When we came to the subject of slavery in our study of moral philosophy, we discussed it for three weeks. The robust personality of Dr. Wayland was felt throughout the whole life of the institution. The discipline which was administered exclusively by him was unnecessarily rigorous, the standard of scholarship was high, the intellectual demands upon the students were exacting. For those who attained high rank the life was a strenuous one. The method pursued was specially calculated to cultivate the powers of analysis and memory. Where-ever the subject permitted of such treatment, we were always required to begin the recitation by giving an analysis of the discussion in the text-book or the lecture. We were then expected to take up point after point of the lesson and recite without being aided by questions from the teacher. There was a general belief among the students, though no formal statement to that effect was made by the Faculty, that they would gain higher credit by repeating the language of the book than by reporting the substance of the thought in their own language. By dint of continued memorizing, some of the students attained to a remark-able development of the verbal memory. I think that nearly one-fourth of the men in my class in their senior year used to learn in two hours—and that after an indigestible dinner in Commons&mdsah;fifteen pages of Smyth's "Lectures on History," so that they could repeat them with little variation from the text. The training in analysis was of very high value in teaching men to seize and hold the main points in an argument and to make points distinctly in the construction of a discourse. On looking back, I think most of the old students will agree that too much value was attached to memorized recitations.
But none the less, many of them have found great advantage in life in the facility which they acquired in retaining with accuracy what they read or write. The reaction against training the memory has probably gone too far in these later days. The natural sciences were taught as skilfully as they well could be in an overcrowded curriculum, and in days when laboratory methods were not employed. Personally I gained great advantage by being permitted to assist the Professor of Chemistry for two years in preparing the experiments which he made before the class. In the ancient languages, certainly in Greek, I think the professors who taught us would now say too much time was given to grammatical and philological detail and too little to rapid reading. But their method was then generally in vogue, and the teaching was excellent of its kind.
To nearly every student the most important event in his college life in those days was the contact with the vigorous and suggestive mind of Dr. Wayland, in the senior classroom, and especially during the study of moral philosophy. It is difficult for those who know Dr. Wayland only by his writings, valuable as some of them are, to understand how he made so deep an impression on his pupils. He was not a great scholar; he was imperious, sometimes prejudiced; but his mind was singularly penetrating and lucid. He insisted on the clearest and sharpest definition of terms before answering a question or engaging in a discussion, and thus often made the inquirer answer his own question by an accurate definition or rendered the discussion superfluous. Withal, he had the keenest wit and a thorough knowledge of men, especially of students. He had the happiest way, often a homely way, of stating an important truth so that it remained forever fixed in the mind of the hearer. There was, too, beyond all this, a certain power of personal presence, a force of character, a moral strength, which lent a tremendous weight to even his commonest words. I have met in my day not a few distinguished men; but I recall none who have so impressed me with their power of personality, none who have uttered so many wise words which I recall every week to my advantage and help in the duties of my daily life. He was a very inapt pupil who passed from under Dr. Wayland's instruction without catching something of his catholic spirit, his passionate love of soul-liberty, and his earnest Christian principle.
The following incidents will give one an idea of his manner in the classroom. One day a rather conceited man said in the class when Dr. Wayland was speaking of the great wisdom of the Proverbs in the Scriptures, "I do not think there is anything very remarkable in the Proverbs. They are rather commonplace remarks of common people." "Very well," replied the Doctor, "make one."
The Doctor's son, Herman Lincoln Wayland, one of my classmates, inherited from his father a very keen wit. The passes between father and son were often very entertaining to the class. One day when we were considering a chapter in the father's text book on Moral Philosophy, Lincoln arose with an expression of great solemnity and respect and said, "Sir, I would like to propound a question." "Well, my son, go on," was the reply. "Well, sir," said the son, "in the learned author's work which we are now perusing I observe the following remark," and then he quoted. The class saw that fun was at hand, and began to laugh. "Well, what of that?" said the father, with a merry twinkle in his eye. "Why, this," continued the son. "In another work of the same learned author, entitled `On the Limitations of Human Responsibility,' I find the following passage.' He then quoted. Clearly the two passages were irreconcilable. The boys were delighted to see that the father was in a trap, and broke into loud laughter. The Doctor's eyes twinkled more merrily, as he asked, "Well, what of that?" "Why," said the son with the utmost gravity, "it has occurred to me that I should like to know how the learned author reconciles the two statements." "Oh," said the father, "that is simple enough. It only shows that since he wrote the first book the learned author has learned something."
And this remark reveals one of the striking characteristics of Dr. Wayland's mind. It was ever growing. It cost him no struggle to change his opinion when he had good ground for so doing. He imbued his students with this open-mindedness. He encouraged the fullest and freest discussion in the class. The passage in Milton's Areopagitica about letting truth grapple with error was often on his lips.
During the spring of my Sophomore year there arose among the students a deep interest in personal religion. Though like most school boys I had thought with some seriousness upon religious subjects, I had been repelled by the extravagances and excitements of so-called revivals in the country towns and villages, which apparently appealed to ignorant and emotional persons rather than to the rational and intelligent. But here my thoughtful and even my merry companions addressed themselves calmly but earnestly to the great question of determining their duty to God and of deciding with what aim and what spirit they should live. The high resolves then formed shaped the careers of a good number of the most conspicuous men in college. I think they would generally testify that they were greatly aided in that critical period of their lives by the wise counsels of Dr. Caswell and Dr. Wayland. Perhaps at no other time did the latter so deeply impress the students as when, standing in the midst of them in the old chapel, and resting one foot on a seat and his arm on the raised knee, he looked into their faces with those piercing eyes and spoke with fatherly tenderness of the divine love. With what pathos he repeated the parable of the Prodigal Son. None of his published sermons gives one any adequate idea of the power of those heart-to-heart talks.
But to us country boys, as we entered upon college life, nothing was more fascinating and more novel and more helpful than the access to well-furnished libraries and the society of students of marked ability and scholarly enthusiasm. The boys who are reared in the neighbourhood ,of libraries can have no appreciation of the sensations which we country lads, whose supply of books had been the most meagre imaginable, but whose thirst for reading was insatiable, experienced in being ushered into a large library and told that all these books were now at our service. I sometimes tremble to think what an onslaught we made upon the crowded shelves. Fortunately association with older students soon helped us learn how and what to read. For there was at that time—and, I hope, always—in Brown a profound interest in literary culture. The students, with few exceptions, lodged in the dormitories, and took their meals in Commons Hall. They went little into society in the city. They were thus drawn very close to each other. The enthusiasm of the more gifted and accomplished scholars was caught in some degree by nearly all. I remember that men were divided as Carlyleists or anti-Carlyleists, Coleridgeians or anti-Coleridgeians, and so on, and that literary, historic, and philosophic theories were as hotly discussed as the current political questions of the day. Not wishing to be unduly laudator temporis acti, I am sure that whoever examines the triennial catalogue of Brown for the years from 1845 to 1852, will see that the college contained within its walls in those years a good number, perhaps an exceptionally large number, of men whose lives have shown that it must have been a high privilege to be intimately associated with them in the companionship of student life. The society of some of them has been one of the chief factors in my own education, both in college and afterward, and one of the chief delights of life. On the whole I think that any student in Brown University who did not graduate in those days with a mind well disciplined for entering upon any worthy career was himself greatly at fault.
The careers of the men who were in college in my time furnish the best proof of the value of the training then given. I may name a few of one hundred and forty students who were my college mates. In the class of 1846 were Thomas Durfee, Chief Justice of Rhode Island, a man of poetic gifts as well as of legal attainments; Franklin J. Dickman, a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, a man of fine literary taste and acquirements; Samuel S. Cox, for many years a prominent member of Congress, first from Ohio, and afterwards from New York, and subsequently United States Minister to Turkey, a gifted speaker; and Francis Wayland, Dean of the Yale Law School. In the class of 1847 were Professor George P. Fisher, of the Yale Theological School, distinguished as a writer in ecclesiastical history, and James P. Boyce, President of the Southern Baptist Theological School at Louisville, Kentucky. In the class of 1848 was Pendleton Murrah, Governor of Texas in the last years of the Civil War. In my own class, 1849, were Benjamin F. Thurston, one of the leading patent lawyers in the country; James Tillinghast, long the leading lawyer in Rhode Island on real estate; Julian Hartridge, a most eloquent member of the Confederate Congress, and afterwards of the Union Congress, and Rowland Hazard, one of the most eminent business men of his time and endowed with superior scientific and literary gifts. In the class of 1850 were James O. Murray, a prominent Presbyterian divine and Professor and Dean in Princeton College, and Edward L. Pierce, conspicuous in public affairs in Massachusetts and biographer of Charles Sumner. In the class of 1851 was Professor J. L. Diman whom I regard as one of the most gifted men I have known, the most conspicuous teacher of history of his generation, but who died while in the very prime of his strength.
We students in Brown believed that there was no better teaching in any college than in ours. Since reading Senator Hoar's description of the instruction at Harvard at the same time, and Andrew D. White's description of the instruction at Yale a little later, I am inclined to think that our impression was correct. The one college teacher of that time whose instruction took rank with that of Dr. Wayland was Mark Hopkins, President of Williams College.
Immediately after leaving college I had an experience not unusual for young graduates. It was necessary for me to do some-thing for my maintenance; but I found nowhere any call for my services. I had left the warm and genial atmosphere of college life to plunge into the great busy world and realized what Schiller meant when he said he stretched out his arms to serve the world and found he had clasped a lump of ice. The great, busy world went on its way and apparently had no use for me and no sympathy with me. The contrast between the warm companionships of college days and this sense of loneliness and isolation and uselessness made the experience of those few weeks following graduation the most painful of my life. The recollection of it has led me often to warn students against being too much discouraged by a similar fortune.
For in due time I was invited to take the place of Assistant Librarian in Brown University for a part of each day, and to spend another part in teaching a boy who was prevented by weakness of his eyes from the study of books. The compensation was very modest, but it gave me the great de-light of returning to the society of college friends and teachers, and the equal delight of having free access to the library, and, incidentally, of guiding to a considerable degree the reading of undergraduates. During the work of classifying and arranging the books in the library an amusing incident occurred, deserving perhaps to be recorded among the "Curiosities of Literature." One of the staff, coming upon Edgeworth's book on "Irish Bulls," catalogued and placed it among the works on agriculture. This was itself one of the best of Irish Bulls.
I read aloud from one to two hours a day interesting books to my pupil, and was surprised to find how many volumes we finished by reading thus for about six months) I gave a part of my leisure hours to my classical studies, rereading "Virgil" and reading for the first time Demosthenes' "Oration on the Crown."
In the spring of 1850 I took a severe cold, which seriously affected my throat. Never having been ill, it did not occur to me that I ought to refrain for a time from oral instruction to my pupil. I continued to talk and read five hours a day to him until I became too hoarse to continue. I thus fastened an inflammation on my throat, from which I have never fully recovered. I returned to my father's house and spent the summer in the attempt to recuperate, but was only partially successful. Meantime my classmate and intimate friend, Rowland Hazard, had been suffering from hemorrhage of the lungs. His father, Rowland G. Hazard, a prosperous manufacturer, who afterwards became somewhat noted for writings on philosophic subjects, and who in early life had travelled on business errands extensively in the South, thought that it would be beneficial to his son to make a journey on horseback through the South. But he deemed it hardly prudent for the young man to go alone. So, knowing my condition, he invited me to accompany his son on this southern journey, and I accepted the invitation with pleasure.