University of Virginia Library

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ANDREW DICKSON WHITE
CHAPTER I
BOYHOOD IN CENTRAL NEW YORK—1832-1850

AT the close of the Revolution which separated the colonies from the mother country, the legislature of New York set apart nearly two million acres of land, in the heart of the State, as bounty to be divided among her soldiers who had taken part in the war; and this "Military Tract,'' having been duly divided into townships, an ill-inspired official, in lack of names for so many divisions, sprinkled over the whole region the contents of his classical dictionary. Thus it was that there fell to a beautiful valley upon the headwaters of the Susquehanna the name of "Homer.'' Fortunately the surveyor-general left to the mountains, lakes, and rivers the names the Indians had given them, and so there was still some poetical element remaining in the midst of that unfortunate nomenclature. The counties, too, as a rule, took Indian names, so that the town of Homer, with its neighbors, Tully, Pompey, Fabius, Lysander, and the rest, were embedded in the county of Onondaga, in the neighborhood of lakes Otisco and Skaneateles, and of the rivers Tioughnioga and Susquehanna.

Hither came, toward the close of the eighteenth century, a body of sturdy New Englanders, and, among them, my grandfathers and grandmothers. Those on my father's side: Asa White and Clara Keep, from Munson, Massachusetts;

those on my mother's side, Andrew Dickson, from Middlefield, Massachusetts, and Ruth Hall from Guilford, Connecticut. They were all of "good stock.'' When I was ten years old I saw my great-grandfather at Middlefield, eighty-two years of age, sturdy and vigorous; he had mowed a broad field the day before, and he walked four miles to church the day after. He had done his duty manfully during the war, had been a member of the "Great and General Court'' of Massachusetts, and had held various other offices, which showed that he enjoyed the confidence of his fellow-citizens. As to the other side of the house, there was a tradition that we came from Peregrine White of the Mayflower; but I have never had time to find whether my doubts on the subject were well founded or not. Enough for me to know that my yeomen ancestors did their duty in war and peace, were honest, straightforward, God-fearing men and women, who owned their own lands, and never knew what it was to cringe before any human being.

These New Englanders literally made the New York wilderness to blossom as the rose; and Homer, at my birth in 1832, about forty years after the first settlers came, was, in its way, one of the prettiest villages imaginable. In the heart of it was the "Green,'' and along the middle of this a line of church edifices, and the academy. In front of the green, parallel to the river, ran, north and south, the broad main street, beautifully shaded with maples, and on either side of this, in the middle of the village, were stores, shops, and the main taverns; while north and south of these were large and pleasant dwellings, each in its own garden or grove or orchard, and separated from the street by light palings,—all, without exception, neat, trim, and tidy.

My first recollections are of a big, comfortable house of brick, in what is now called "colonial style,'' with a "stoop,'' long and broad, on its southern side, which in summer was shaded with honeysuckles. Spreading out southward from this was a spacious garden filled with

old-fashioned flowers, and in this I learned to walk. To this hour the perfume of a pink brings the whole scene before me, and proves the justice of Oliver Wendell Holmes's saying that we remember past scenes more vividly by the sense of smell than by the sense of sight.

I can claim no merit for clambering out of poverty. My childhood was happy; my surroundings wholesome; I was brought up neither in poverty nor riches; my parents were what were called "well-to-do-people''; everything about me was good and substantial; but our mode of life was frugal; waste or extravagance or pretense was not permitted for a moment. My paternal grandfather had been, in the early years of the century, the richest man in the township; but some time before my birth he had become one of the poorest; for a fire had consumed his mills, there was no insurance, and his health gave way. On my father, Horace White, had fallen, therefore, the main care of his father's family. It was to the young man, apparently, a great calamity:—that which grieved him most being that it took him—a boy not far in his teens—out of school. But he met the emergency manfully, was soon known far and wide for his energy, ability, and integrity, and long before he had reached middle age was considered one of the leading men of business in the county.

My mother had a more serene career. In another part of these Reminiscences, saying something of my religious and political development, I shall speak again of her and of her parents. Suffice it here that her father prospered as a man of business, was known as "Colonel,'' and also as "Squire'' Dickson, and represented his county in the State legislature. He died when I was about three years old, and I vaguely remember being brought to him as he lay upon his death-bed. On one account, above all others, I have long looked back to him with pride. For the first public care of the early settlers had been a church, and the second a school. This school had been speedily developed into Cortland Academy, which soon became famous

throughout all that region, and, as a boy of five or six years of age, I was very proud to read on the corner-stone of the Academy building my grandfather's name among those of the original founders.

Not unlikely there thus came into my blood the strain which has led me ever since to feel that the building up of goodly institutions is more honorable than any other work,—an idea which was at the bottom of my efforts in developing the University of Michigan, and in founding Cornell University.

To Cortland Academy students came from far and near; and it soon began sending young men into the foremost places of State and Church. At an early day, too, it began receiving young women and sending them forth to become the best of matrons. As my family left the place when I was seven years old I was never within its walls as a student, but it acted powerfully on my education in two ways,—it gave my mother the best of her education, and it gave to me a respect for scholarship. The library and collections, though small, suggested pursuits better than the scramble for place or pelf; the public exercises, two or three times a year, led my thoughts, no matter how vaguely, into higher regions, and I shall never forget the awe which came over me when as a child, I saw Principal Woolworth, with his best students around him on the green, making astronomical observations through a small telescope.

Thus began my education into that great truth, so imperfectly understood, as yet, in our country, that stores, shops, hotels, facilities for travel and traffic are not the highest things in civilization.

This idea was strengthened in the family. Devoted as my father was to business, he always showed the greatest respect for men of thought. I have known him, even when most absorbed in his pursuits, to watch occasions for walking homeward with a clergyman or teacher, whose conversation he especially prized. There was scant respect in the family for the petty politicians of the

region; but there was great respect for the instructors of the academy, and for any college professor who happened to be traveling through the town. I am now in my sixty-eighth year, and I write these lines from the American Embassy in Berlin. It is my duty here, as it has been at other European capitals, to meet various high officials; but that old feeling, engendered in my childhood, continues, and I bow to the representatives of the universities,—to the leaders in science, literature, and art, with a feeling of awe and respect far greater than to their so-called superiors,—princelings and high military or civil officials.

Influences of a more direct sort came from a primary school. To this I was taken, when about three years old, for a reason which may strike the present generation as curious. The colored servant who had charge of me wished to learn to read—so she slipped into the school and took me with her. As a result, though my memory runs back distinctly to events near the beginning of my fourth year, it holds not the faintest recollection of a time when I could not read easily. The only studies which I recall with distinctness, as carried on before my seventh year, are arithmetic and geography. As to the former, the multiplication-table was chanted in chorus by the whole body of children, a rhythmical and varied movement of the arms being carried on at the same time. These exercises gave us pleasure and fastened the tables in our minds. As to geography, that gave pleasure in another way. The books contained pictures which stimulated my imagination and prompted me to read the adjacent text. There was no over-pressure. Mental recreation and information were obtained in a loose way from "Rollo Books,'' "Peter Parley Books,'' "Sanford and Merton,'' the "Children's Magazine,'' and the like. I now think it a pity that I was not allowed to read, instead of these, the novels of Scott and Cooper, which I discovered later. I devoutly thank Heaven that no such thing as a sensation newspaper was ever brought into the house,—

even if there were one at that time,—which I doubt. As to physical recreation, there was plenty during the summer in the fields and woods, and during the winter in coasting, building huts in the deep snow, and in storming or defending the snow forts on the village green. One of these childish sports had a historical connection with a period which now seems very far away. If any old settler happened to pass during our snow-balling or our shooting with bows and arrows, he was sure to look on with interest, and, at some good shot, to cry out,— "Shoot Burgoyne!''—thus recalling his remembrances of the sharpshooters who brought about the great surrender at Saratoga.

In my seventh year my father was called to take charge of the new bank established at Syracuse, thirty miles distant, and there the family soon joined him. I remember that coming through the Indian Reservation, on the road between the two villages, I was greatly impressed by the bowers and other decorations which had been used shortly before at the installation of a new Indian chief. It was the headquarters of the Onondagas,—formerly the great central tribe of the Iroquois,—the warlike confederacy of the Six Nations; and as, in a general way, the story was told me on that beautiful day in September a new world of romance was opened to me, so that Indian stories, and especially Cooper's novels, when I was allowed to read them, took on a new reality.

Syracuse, which is now a city of one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, was then a straggling village of about five thousand. After much time lost in sundry poor "select schools'' I was sent to one of the public schools which was very good, and thence, when about twelve years old, to the preparatory department of the Syracuse Academy.

There, by good luck, was Joseph A. Allen, the best teacher of English branches I have ever known. He had no rules and no system; or, rather, his rule was to have no rules, and his system was to have no system. To

genius. He seemed to divine the character and enter into the purpose of every boy. Work under him was a pleasure. His methods were very simple. Great attention was given to reading aloud from a book made up of selections from the best authors, and to recitals from these. Thus I stored up not only some of the best things in the older English writers, but inspiring poems of Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow, and other moderns. My only regret is that more of this was not given us. I recall, among treasures thus gained, which have been precious to me ever since, in many a weary or sleepless hour on land and sea, extracts from Shakspere, parts of Milton's "Samson Agonistes,'' and of his sonnets; Gray's "Elegy,'' Byron's "Ode to the Ocean,'' Campbell's "What 's Hallowed Ground?'' Goldsmith's "Deserted Village,'' Longfellow's "Psalm of Life,'' Irving's "Voyage to Europe,'' and parts of Webster's "Reply to Hayne.''

At this school the wretched bugbear of English spelling was dealt with by a method which, so long as our present monstrous orthography continues, seems to me the best possible. During the last half-hour of every day, each scholar was required to have before him a copy-book, of which each page was divided into two columns. At the head of the first column was the word "Spelling''; at the head of the second column was the word "Corrected.'' The teacher then gave out to the school about twenty of the more important words in the reading-lesson of the day, and, as he thus dictated each word, each scholar wrote it in the column headed "Spelling.'' When all the words were thus written, the first scholar was asked to spell from his book the first word; if misspelled, it was passed to the next, and so on until it was spelled correctly; whereupon all who had made a mistake in writing it made the proper correction on the opposite column. The result of this was that the greater part of us learned orthography practically. For the practical use of spelling comes in writing.

The only mistake in Mr. Allen's teaching was too much

attention to English grammar. The order ought to be, literature first, and grammar afterward. Perhaps there is no more tiresome trifling in the world for boys and girls than rote recitations and parsing from one of the usual grammatical text-books.

As to mathematics, arithmetic was, perhaps, pushed too far into puzzles; but geometry was made fascinating by showing its real applications and the beauty of its reasoning. It is the only mathematical study I ever loved. In natural science, though most of the apparatus of schools nowadays was wanting, Mr. Allen's instruction was far beyond his time. Never shall I forget my excited interest when, occasionally, the village surgeon came in, and the whole school was assembled to see him dissect the eye or ear or heart of an ox. Physics, as then understood, was studied in a text-book, but there was illustration by simple apparatus, which fastened firmly in my mind the main facts and principles.

The best impulse by this means came from the principal of the academy, Mr. Oren Root,—one of the pio-neers of American science, whose modesty alone stood in the way of his fame. I was too young to take direct instruction from him, but the experiments which I saw him perform led me, with one or two of my mates, to construct an excellent electrical machine and subsidiary apparatus; and with these, a small galvanic battery and an extemporized orrery, I diluted Professor Root's lectures with the teachings of my little books on natural philosophy and astronomy to meet the capacities of the younger boys in our neighborhood.

Salient among my recollections of this period are the cries and wailing of a newly-born babe in the rooms at the academy occupied by the principal, and adjacent to our big school-room. Several decades of years later I had the honor of speaking on the platform of Cooper Institute in company with this babe, who, as I write, is, I believe, the very energetic Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President McKinley.

Unfortunately for me, Mr. Root was soon afterward called away to a professorship at Hamilton College, and so, though living in the best of all regions for geological study, I was never properly grounded in that science, and as to botany, I am to this hour utterly ignorant of its simplest facts and principles. I count this as one of the mistakes in my education,—resulting in the loss of much valuable knowledge and high pleasure.

As to physical development, every reasonable encouragement was given to play. Mr. Allen himself came frequently to the play-grounds. He was an excellent musician and a most helpful influence was exerted by singing, which was a daily exercise of the school. I then began taking lessons regularly in music and became proficient enough to play the organ occasionally in church; the best result of this training being that it gave my life one of its deepest, purest, and most lasting pleasures.

On the moral side, Mr. Allen influenced many of us by liberalizing and broadening our horizon. He was a disciple of Channing and an abolitionist, and, though he never made the slightest attempt to proselyte any of his scholars, the very atmosphere of the school made sectarian bigotry impossible.

As to my general education outside the school I browsed about as best I could. My passion in those days was for machinery, and, above all, for steam machinery. The stationary and locomotive engines upon the newly-established railways toward Albany on the east and Buffalo on the west especially aroused my attention, and I came to know every locomotive, its history, character, and capabilities, as well as every stationary engine in the whole region. My holiday excursions, when not employed in boat-ing or skating on the Onondaga Creek, or upon the lake, were usually devoted to visiting workshops, where the engine drivers and stokers seemed glad to talk with a youngster who took an interest in their business. Especially interested was I in a rotary engine on "Barker's centrifugal principle,'' with which the inventor had promised

to propel locomotives at the rate of a hundred miles an hour, but which had been degraded to grinding bark in a tannery. I felt its disgrace keenly, as a piece of gross injustice; but having obtained a small brass model, fitted to it a tin boiler and placed it on a little stern-wheel boat, I speedily discovered the secret of the indignity which had overtaken the machine, for no boat could carry a boiler large enough to supply steam for it.

So, too, I knew every water-wheel in that part of the county, whether overshot, undershot, breast, or turbine. Everything in the nature of a motor had an especial fascination for me, and for the men in control of such power I entertained a respect which approached awe.

Among all these, my especial reverence was given to the locomotive engineers; in my youthful mind they took on a heroic character. Often during the night watches I thought of them as braving storm and peril, responsible for priceless freights of human lives. Their firm, keen faces come back to me vividly through the mists of sixty years, and to this day I look up to their successors at the throttle with respectful admiration.

After Professor Root's departure the Syracuse Academy greatly declined, Mr. Allen being the only strong man left among its teachers, and, as I was to go to college, I was removed to a "classical school.'' This school was not at first very successful. Its teacher was a good scholar but careless. Under him I repeated the grammatical forms and rules in Latin and Greek, glibly, term after term, without really understanding their value. His great mistake, which seems to me a not infrequent one, was taking it for granted that repeating rules and forms means understanding them and their application. But a catastrophe came. I had been promoted beyond my deserts from a lower into an upper Latin class, and at a public examination the Rev. Samuel Joseph May, who was present, asked me a question, to which I made an answer revealing utter ignorance of one of the simplest principles of Latin grammar. He was disconcerted

at the result, I still more so, and our preceptor most of all. That evening my father very solemnly asked me about it. I was mortified beyond expression, did not sleep at all that night, and of my own accord, began reviewing my Andrews and Stoddard thoroughly and vigorously. But this did not save the preceptor. A successor was called, a man who afterward became an eminent Presbyterian divine and professor in a Southern university, James W. Hoyt, one of the best and truest of men, and his manly, moral influence over his scholars was remarkable. Many of them have reached positions of usefulness, and I think they will agree that his influence upon their lives was most happy. The only drawback was that he was still very young, not yet through his senior year in Union College, and his methods in classical teaching were imperfect. He loved his classics and taught his better students to love them, but he was neither thorough in grammar, nor sure in translation, and this I afterward found to my sorrow. My friend and schoolmate of that time, W. O. S., published a few years since, in the "St. Nicholas Magazine,'' an account of this school. It was somewhat idealized, but we doubtless agree in thinking that the lack of grammatical drill was more than made up by the love of manliness, and the dislike of meanness, which was in those days our very atmosphere. Probably the best thing for my mental training was that Mr. Hoyt interested me in my Virgil, Horace, and Xenophon, and required me to write out my translations in the best English at my command.

But to all his pupils he did not prove so helpful. One of them, though he has since become an energetic man of business on the Pacific Coast, was certainly not helped into his present position by his Latin; for of all the translations I have ever heard or read of, one of his was the worst. Being called to construe the first line of the Æneid, he proceeded as follows:

"Arma,—arms; virumque,—and a man; cano,—and a dog.'' There was a roar, and Mr. Hoyt, though evidently

saddened, kept his temper. He did not, like the great and good Arnold of Rugby, under similar provocation, knock the offender down with the text-book.

Still another agency in my development was the debating club, so inevitable in an American village. Its discussions were sometimes pretentious and always crude, but something was gained thereby. I remember that one of the subjects was stated as follows: "Which has done most harm, intemperance or fanaticism.'' The debate was without any striking feature until my schoolmate, W. O. S., brought up heavy artillery on the side of the anti-fanatics: namely, a statement of the ruin wrought by Mohammedanism in the East, and, above all, the destruction of the great Alexandrian library by Caliph Omar; and with such eloquence that all the argumentation which any of us had learned in the temperance meetings was paralyzed.

On another occasion we debated the question: "Was the British Government justified in its treatment of Napoleon Bonaparte?'' Much historical lore had been brought to bear on the question, when an impassioned young orator wound up a bitter diatribe against the great emperor as follows: "The British Government was justified, and if for no other reason, by the Emperor Napo-leon's murder of the `Duck de Engine' '' (Duc d'Enghien).

As to education outside of the school very important to me had been the discovery, when I was about ten years old, of " `The Monastery,' by the author of `Waverley.' '' Who the "author of `Waverley' '' was I neither knew nor cared, but read the book three times, end over end, in a sort of fascination. Unfortunately, novels and romances were kept under lock and key, as unfit reading for children, and it was some years before I reveled in Scott's other novels. That they would have been thoroughly good and wholesome reading for me I know, and about my sixteenth year they opened a new world to me and gave healthful play to my imagination. I also read and re-read Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress,'' and, with pleasure

even more intense, the earlier works of Dickens, which were then appearing.

My only regret, as regards that time, is that, between the rather trashy "boys' books'' on one side and the rather severe books in the family library on the other, I read far less of really good literature than I ought to have done. My reading was absolutely without a guide, hence fitful and scrappy; parts of Rollin's "Ancient History'' and Lander's "Travels in Africa'' being mixed up with "Robinson Crusoe'' and "The Scottish Chiefs.'' Reflection on my experience has convinced me that some kindly guidance in the reading of a fairly scholarly boy is of the utmost importance, and never more so than now, when books are so many and attractive. I should lay much stress, also, on the hearing of good literature well read, and the interspersing of such reading with some remarks by the reader, pointing out the main beauties of the pieces thus presented.

About my tenth year occurred an event, apparently trivial, but really very important in my mental development during many years afterward. My father brought home one day, as a gift to my mother, a handsome quarto called "The Gallery of British Artists.'' It contained engravings from pictures by Turner, Stanfield, Cattermole, and others, mainly representing scenes from Shakspere, Scott, Burns, picturesque architecture, and beautiful views in various parts of Europe. Of this book I never tired. It aroused in me an intense desire to know more of the subjects represented, and this desire has led me since to visit and to study every cathedral, church, and town hall of any historical or architectural significance in Europe, outside the Spanish peninsula. But, far more important, it gave an especial zest to nearly all Scott's novels, and especially to the one which I have always thought the most fascinating, "Quentin Durward.'' This novel led me later, not merely to visit Liege, and Orléans, and Cléry, and Tours, but to devour the chronicles and histories of that period, to become deeply

interested in historical studies, and to learn how great principles lie hidden beneath the surface of events. The first of these principles I ever clearly discerned was during my reading of "Quentin Durward'' and "Anne of Geierstein,'' when there was revealed to me the secret of the centralization of power in Europe, and of the triumph of monarchy over feudalism.

In my sixteenth and seventeenth years another element entered into my education. Syracuse, as the central city of the State, was the scene of many conventions and public meetings. That was a time of very deep earnestness in political matters. The last great efforts were making, by the more radical, peaceably to prevent the extension of slavery, and, by the more conservative, peaceably to preserve the Union. The former of these efforts interested me most. There were at Syracuse frequent public debates between the various groups of the anti-slavery party represented by such men as Gerrit Smith, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, John Parker Hale, Samuel Joseph May, and Frederick Douglass. They took strong hold upon me and gave me a higher idea of a man's best work in life. That was the bloom period of the old popular lecture. It was the time when lectures were expected to build character and increase knowledge; the sensation and buffoon business which destroyed the system had not yet come in. I feel to this hour the good influence of lectures then heard, in the old City Hall at Syracuse, from such men as President Mark Hopkins, Bishop Alonzo Potter, Senator Hale of New Hampshire, Emerson, Ware, Whipple, and many others.

As to recreative reading at this period, the author who exercised the strongest influence over me was Charles Kingsley. His novels "Alton Locke'' and "Yeast'' interested me greatly in efforts for doing away with old abuses in Europe, and his "Two Years After'' increased my hatred for negro slavery in America. His "Westward Ho!'' extended my knowledge of the Elizabethan period and increased my manliness. Of this period, too,

was my reading of Lowell's Poems, many of which I greatly enjoyed. His "Biglow Papers'' were a perpetual delight; the dialect was familiar to me since, in the little New England town transplanted into the heart of central New York, in which I was born, the less educated people used it, and the dry and droll Yankee expressions of our "help'' and "hired man'' were a source of constant amusement in the family.

In my seventeenth year came a trial. My father had taken a leading part in establishing a parish school for St. Paul's church in Syracuse, in accordance with the High Church views of our rector, Dr. Gregory, and there was finally called to the mastership a young candidate for orders, a brilliant scholar and charming man, who has since become an eminent bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church. To him was intrusted my final preparation for college. I had always intended to enter one of the larger New England universities, but my teacher was naturally in favor of his Alma Mater, and the influence of our bishop, Dr. de Lancey, being also thrown powerfully into the scale, my father insisted on placing me at a small Protestant Episcopal college in western New York. I went most reluctantly. There were in the faculty several excellent men, one of whom afterward became a colleague of my own in Cornell University, and proved of the greatest value to it. Unfortunately, we of the lower college classes could have very little instruction from him; still there was good instruction from others; the tutor in Greek, James Morrison Clarke, was one of the best scholars I have ever known.

It was in the autumn of 1849 that I went into residence at the little college and was assigned a very unprepossessing room in a very ugly barrack. Entering my new quarters I soon discovered about me various cabalistic signs, some of them evidently made by heating large iron keys, and pressing them against the woodwork. On inquiring I found that the room had been occupied some years before by no less a personage than Philip Spencer,

a member of the famous Spencer family of Albany, who, having passed some years at this little college, and never having been able to get out of the freshman class, had gone to another institution of about the same grade, had there founded a Greek letter fraternity which is now widely spread among American universities, and then, through the influence of his father, who was Secretary of War, had been placed as a midshipman under Commodore McKenzie on the brig-of-war Somers. On the coast of Africa a mutiny was discovered, and as, on examination, young Spencer was found at the head of it, and papers discovered in his cabin revealed the plan of seizing the ship and using it in a career of piracy, the young man, in spite of his connection with a member of the Cabinet, was hanged at the yard-arm with two of his associates.

The most curious relic of him at the college was preserved in the library of the Hermean Society. It was a copy of "The Pirates' Own Book'': a glorification of the exploits of "Blackbeard'' and other great freebooters, profusely adorned with illustrations of their joys and triumphs. This volume bore on the fly-leaf the words, "Presented to the Hermean Society by Philip Spencer,'' and was in those days shown as a great curiosity.

The college was at its lowest ebb; of discipline there was none; there were about forty students, the majority of them, sons of wealthy churchmen, showing no inclination to work and much tendency to dissipation. The authorities of the college could not afford to expel or even offend a student. for its endowment was so small that it must have all the instruction fees possible, and must keep on good terms with the wealthy fathers of its scapegrace students. The scapegraces soon found this out, and the result was a little pandemonium. Only about a dozen of our number studied at all; the rest, by translations, promptings, and evasions escaped without labor. I have had to do since, as student, professor, or lecturer, with some half-dozen large universities at home and abroad,

and in all of these together have not seen so much carousing and wild dissipation as I then saw in this little "Church college'' of which the especial boast was that, owing to the small number of its students, it was "able to exercise a direct Christian influence upon every young man committed to its care.''

The evidences of this Christian influence were not clear. The president of the college, Dr. Benjamin Hale, was a clergyman of the highest character; a good scholar, an excellent preacher, and a wise administrator; but his stature was very small, his girth very large, and his hair very yellow. When, then, on the thirteenth day of the month, there was read at chapel from the Psalter the words, "And there was little Benjamin, their ruler,'' very irreverent demonstrations were often made by the students, presumably engaged in worship; demonstrations so mortifying, indeed, that at last the president frequently substituted for the regular Psalms of the day one of the beautiful "Selections'' of Psalms which the American Episcopal Church has so wisely incorporated into its prayer-book.

But this was by no means the worst indignity which these youth "under direct Christian influence'' perpetrated upon their reverend instructors. It was my privilege to behold a professor, an excellent clergyman, seeking to quell hideous riot in a student's room, buried under a heap of carpets, mattresses, counterpanes, and blankets; to see another clerical professor forced to retire through the panel of a door under a shower of lexicons, boots, and brushes, and to see even the president himself, on one occasion, obliged to leave his lecture-room by a ladder from a window, and, on another, kept at bay by a shower of beer-bottles.

One favorite occupation was rolling cannon-balls along the corridors at midnight, with frightful din and much damage: a tutor, having one night been successful in catching and confiscating two of these, pounced from his door the next night upon a third; but this having

been heated nearly to redness and launched from a shovel, the result was that he wore bandages upon his hands for many days.

Most ingenious were the methods for "training freshmen,''— one of the mildest being the administration of soot and water by a hose-pipe thrust through the broken panel of a door. Among general freaks I remember seeing a horse turned into the chapel, and a stuffed wolf, dressed in a surplice, placed upon the roof of that sacred edifice.

But the most elaborate thing of the kind I ever saw was the breaking up of a "Second Adventist'' meeting by a score of student roysterers. An itinerant fanatic had taken an old wooden meeting-house in the lower part of the town, had set up on either side of the pulpit large canvas representations of the man of brass with feet of clay, and other portentous characters of the prophecies, and then challenged the clergy to meet him in public debate. At the appointed time a body of college youth appeared, most sober in habit and demure in manner, having at their head "Bill'' Howell of Black Rock and "Tom'' Clark of Manlius, the two wildest miscreants in the sophomore class, each over six feet tall, the latter dressed as a respectable farmer, and the former as a country clergyman, wearing a dress-coat, a white cravat, a tall black hat wrapped in crape, leaning on a heavy, ivory-knobbed cane, and carrying ostentatiously a Greek Testament. These disguised malefactors, having taken their seats in the gallery directly facing the pulpit, the lecturer expressed his "satisfaction at seeing clergymen present,'' and began his demonstrations. For about five minutes all went well; then "Bill'' Howell solemnly arose and, in a snuffling voice, asked permission to submit a few texts from scripture. Permission being granted, he put on a huge pair of goggles, solemnly opened his Greek Testament, read emphatically the first passage which attracted his attention and impressively asked the lecturer what he had to say to it. At this, the lecturer, greatly puzzled,

asked what the reverend gentleman was reading. Upon this Howell read in New Testament Greek another utterly irrelevant passage. In reply the lecturer said, rather roughly, "If you will speak English I will answer you.'' At this Howell said with the most humble suavity, "Do I understand that the distinguished gentleman does not recognize what I have been reading?'' The preacher answered, "I don't understand any such gibberish; speak English.'' Thereupon Howell threw back his long black hair and launched forth into eloquent denunciation as follows: "Sir, is it possible that you come here to interpret to us the Holy Bible and do not recognize the language in which that blessed book was written? Sir, do you dare to call the very words of the Almighty `gibberish?' '' At this all was let loose; some students put asafetida on the stove; others threw pigeon-shot against the ceiling and windows, making a most appalling din, and one wretch put in deadly work with a syringe thrust through the canvas representation of the man of brass with feet of clay. But, alas, Constable John Dey had recognized Howell and Clark, even amid their disguises. He had dealt with them too often before. The next tableau showed them, with their tall hats crushed over their heads, belaboring John Dey and his myrmidons, and presently, with half a dozen other ingenuous youth, they were haled to the office of justice. The young judge who officiated on this occasion was none other than a personage who will be mentioned with great respect more than once in these reminiscences,—Charles James Folger,— afterward my colleague in the State Senate, Chief Justice of the State and Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. He had met Howell often, for they were members of the same Greek letter fraternity,—the thrice illustrious Sigma Phi,—and, only a few days before, Howell had presented me to him; but there was no fraternal bond visible now; justice was sternly implacable, and good round fines were imposed upon all the culprits caught.

The philosophy of all this waywardness and dissipation

was very simple. There was no other outlet for the animal spirits of these youth. Athletics were unknown; there was no gymnasium, no ball-playing, and, though the college was situated on the shore of one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, no boating. As regards my own personal relation to this condition of things I have pictured, it was more that of a good-natured spectator than of an active accomplice. My nearest friends were in the thick of it, but my tastes kept me out of most of it. I was fond of books, and, in the little student's library in my college building I reveled. Moreover, I then began to accumulate for myself the library which has since grown to such large proportions. Still the whole life of the place became more and more unsatisfactory to me, and I determined, at any cost, to escape from it and find some seat of learning where there was less frolic and more study.