WHERE A VISITANT SEES MORE THAN A RESIDENT
When in the company of a citizen, I am reviewing my place of early
residence, while he obviously knows the town well, yet I see all that he
does and recollection faithful to its office supplies me with an image
of the past which he does not perceive. He gets no glimpse of the
panorama that is passing in review before me. In looking over an
illustrated volume of the place there are two pictures on each page.
There is the one I now see, and to my inner sight there is just above it
the one I remember. It is a case of what philosophers call Compound
Perception. The absence of the object is contrasted with its presence.
You imagine it gone, and perceive the blank it would leave. You observe
the object, you also consider it as a negative quantity, for a moment
thinking it away. There is the depot. I do not need to have it pointed
out. Beside this building I instantly see the picture of another station
unobserved by the present generation, which was connected with a
different route. Before the Rock Island and before the Central of Iowa,
we had the underground R. R. In Grinnell that came first. It did a good
business. It had a through line. Its chief station still exists. The
glamor of the past is upon it. I knew the station master. I am on
intimate terms with one of its conductors. When its train was made up
any one could compute its horse-power. The place had public spirit
enough for a half dozen average towns. There is the church where the
college diplomas were awarded. How plainly I also saw the church where I
was, at its completion, an habitual hearer of the Word, that stood on
the same noble corner. I never could understand how any mortal could be
hired to tear down the earlier sacred edifice. It must have been done by
aliens. No one could have bribed me to do it. There isn't money enough.
I would as soon have lifted my hand against her who gave me being. The
fate of Uzza, whom the Lord smote for a smaller impiety, would have
given me alarm.
_A Sort of Homesickness_
All religious annals will be searched in vain for a better example of
the community church. Everybody attended it. All our pleasures were
connected with it. Anyone could get the key to hold a meeting. There was
always something doing. It had a part in everything that interested the
people. When in the Civil War there were victories, the farmers came
in, and there sang Praise God, etc., and when we had reverses there was
a meeting to appoint a fast. Far away down the gallery of memory hangs a
picture. It is a church scene. The figures are the deacons and others,
in colors that are fresh and glowing to this hour. The artist that could
portray them on canvas would be immortalized in that one act. Extremely
fastidious critics would call them old fashioned, but they have at least
this merit, they are life-like. It would be becoming in us to honor them
as they, in their day, honored the community. I recollect nearly every
family that sat under the benign ministry of that church, and could come
near to designating each pew they occupied. There was a kind of
exaltation about the place, which held the fire, in the old days, on
God's altars, and the quaint bare building became as the temple on Mount
Zion. Never in the splendid temples, seen in after life, where the
wealth of princes had been lavished, to decorate the world famous
cathedrals, where stained windows shed an impressive light over the
solemn courts, and where the ponderous organ rolls its deep thunders on
the ear, have I seemed to be so near the Holy of Holies, as on one or
two occasions when my heart was lifted up in that unadorned place of
worship. Once the clergyman had pronounced the blessing and the
congregation were dispersing when I lingered behind to make a single
vow. Tear down that church! I could not have stood it to be present. To
some meeting houses they attach a card giving, in plain letters, the
church's name and age.
_Recollections of Other Years_
If, as a boy, I had been asked to prepare a tablet to place on that
heaven-blessed house of prayer, I should have put up the sign, "The Lord
lives here." There was a solemnity, in its very simplicity, and an
impressiveness not artificial, which to a religious fanatic might easily
seem supernatural.
The large plain room was pervaded, in the evening, by a dim religious
light that proceeded from a few reeking kerosene lamps. Any kind of a
meeting was opened with prayer and much decorum and orderliness were
observed by the citizens, old and young. The church took everything hard
that concerned its own folks. The building was our cradle of liberty.
Both men and boys rocked that cradle. A large sweetly toned bell,
joyously rung by lads at day break on Independence Day, was finer music
to our juvenile ears than would be the combined bands of the world. In
the capitol at Richmond, a painting is exhibited, representing the Earl
of Chatham pointing to a little flame on the altar of liberty. At that
flame how many torches have been lighted. Some have held that the church
must be opened only to old age, but that was not the view then and
there held. I loved the church. I never saw it surpassed. All its ideals
are mine today. I have labored and sacrificed to exhibit them and
realize them in other places. If the older present resident members were
to visit the people that once had their church home with them there,
they would find no trouble in recognizing the leaven which had been
carried away from that sanctuary. Temperaments were different, all were
unlike and individual, with unequal education, with diverse talents, not
able to see with each other's spectacles, yet all learned from each
other and all united on the big things. I feel myself indebted to those
with whom I associated there, some of whom afterward obtained high and
merited distinction. Some of them, God has made princes in the earth.
There is the place where they grew up and there they had their vision of
service. My warmest prayers have always been for their success. A throng
of recollections which I can not repress starts from every corner of the
old church and attends my walks about the streets.
_Through Tears of Memory_
There is no other such dark day as when a boy parts with his home and
his native state for good, to find a home God only knows where, and the
old life that meant so much to him is over. There were our friends,
there was our home, and there are our graves, my father having given
commandment concerning his bones. Pardon me, gentle reader, if for the
moment I speak with a personal accent. An individual cannot inherit his
experience. It is my feeling that it is well to know some part of the
world thoroughly. "He who is everywhere is nowhere." Neither a
globe-trotter, running like a wandering Jew all over the world, nor a
tramp knows the countries he travels over. Here in my early day was a
place without amusements.
The hoe, the hod, the plough, the scythe, the shovel, the woodsaw, and
the axe, these are all old friends of mine. It is possible that as
things are now viewed our sphere had in it a trifle too much of
constraint, that the soul had hardly free play enough to unbend and
recreate the mind, that we settled down too early, like well broken
horses, to the work of life. A little shadow passes over my mind as I
think of the analogy to bitting a horse. But when at sunset all nature
rings the Angelus, we all say in our hearts, God bless the town and all
its people.
_Unterrified Visitors_
"It would be no unprofitable thing," said Increase Mather, "for you to
pass over the several streets and call to mind those who lived here so
many years ago." On my approach, the homes of my day, that now survive,
seemed to come right out to meet me. The old citizens appeared to start
forth from their portrait frames. "They come like shadows and so
depart." The old time town was revivified. The dry bones were stirred
and made to live. The gates opened their arms widely finding us early
residents and bold enough to enter. The same bordered walk led up to the
front door. Houses, Say on. You want to speak. Utter your voices. Tell
your story. I know its truth. You will not startle me. Many appeared to
answer me as I stood, with my greetings, before them. Our old relations
are all in my heart. In my day, everybody knew his neighbor and his
neighbor was everybody. As is known of ancient Athens, at its best,
quoting from an oration writer, "It is impossible for a man in this city
to be of good repute or otherwise without all of us knowing it."
Even the most beautiful scenery needs absence to gain its hold upon us,
and to unite a new and an old revaluation into something better than
either. There is an old proverb, What is ever seen, is never seen. What
is always heard, is never heard. The sound of Niagara becomes inaudible
to the waiters at the hotels. "To feel the same thing always and not to
feel at all, come to the same thing." A man casts his shadow over "A
land where all things always seem the same."
_When the World was Young_
As a boy goes zig-zagging along, dilatorily, of a May morning to school,
in and out, among and around the byways, where anything unusual is
proceeding, he actually knows a town better than many a man who has
lived in it longer, and I would not barter the pleasant memories of my
early home for treasures of gold. I would not exchange even the
impressions made indelibly on my mind for a gift of public office. There
is nothing that I care to take in exchange for my soul. Upon the side of
Mt. Blanc is a little patch of verdure called Le Jardin. It is always
green. In the deserts are oases. In the ocean wastes we find islands of
tropical beauty, so here with nature's extreme fertility we have,
enameled with flowers, what they call in Evangeline's land a Grand Pre,
extending to the horizon's out-most rim.
_You Can't Paint the Sunrise_
In boyhood's happy days, in the jocund season of youth, the grass grew
quietly in the highways of the town, and bleating sheep and frolicsome
calves sported about on the verdant savannas. In the days of which I am
writing, cattle and horses were lawful commoners, and roamed at will
over much of the town plat. On rising early a boy would find a group of
small cattle just in the act of making up its mind that day was
breaking. Some would be rising from their hard beds, some had risen and
commenced to graze, others were still lying as they had reposed all
night, the dew glistening on their hair. Mists were floating over the
low grounds in the swales of the prairies, but the reddening east was
waking all nature into newness of life, and presently, the ever-punctual
sun rose up to do his circuit of the earth. It was a healthy boy's walk
amid the fields of morning and he was enraptured with the delightful
vision. The day began earlier then. It was long, and like a clothes-line
being so extended, required a prop in the middle, hence dinner could not
be deferred then until an evening hour. Noon is now becoming as extinct
as the mastodon. It faded out. It seems unreal, and belongs to the past.
Boys did not carry watches and became quite expert in using a north and
south fence for a divider in finding that medial line that cuts the day
in halves. We still have the expressions A. M. and P. M. but we make
little use of the M. We have God's time, and man's time, for the sake of
daylight saving, but my memory testifies that we used the daylight for
about all it was worth, anyway up to our limit, at both ends of the day.
People then were much more expressive than they are now. If they felt
refreshed and exuberant they did not care who knew it. We used to feel
with Dickens, Give us, oh give us, the man who sings at his work! He
will do more in the same time, he will do it better. He will persevere
longer.
"Amidst the storm the Pilgrims sang,
And the stars heard, and the sea,
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
To the anthems of the free."
Children were very much more commonly sung to sleep with a mother's foot
upon the rocker of the cradle. If we could take out of our minds the
fact that the hymn most widely used was for children, we all would say,
How beautiful! Pious hymns and patriotic songs were the great leaders.
Down through the corridors of time I can still hear the voices of both
men and women who sang as they wrought. They who found that their wives
did not sing when employed about the house set themselves to find the
reason of the suspension and to remove it. This being done,
unconsciously the house was gladdened again by impromptu song. From the
fact that men worked more in solitary, quiet places, as contrasted with
factories, having heavy machinery, men used to whistle. Some became very
expert. When one man would say, Let's see how does that tune go? the
custom was for the other to take up a few bars by whistling. When
soldiers or parades or processions were passing, if the band should
stop, those marching would take up some patriotic or other air and all
would whistle it. This would spread to the boys on the side walk and
extend through the town, and be revived the next day.
_Another Relic of the Past_
Men worked more hours and had more chores to do, early and late, so
being physically weary, when they sat down to read there was a kind of
physical preparation for it. The eye did not drop on a newspaper
casually at any time. To begin to read required then a kind of personal
adjustment illustrated remotely by that of a person who sits down when
about to partake of a meal. Thus we used to see people take a book, and
get ready to read it as you often see a person now who is about to sing
in public, show what he is going to do by using a moment or two in
getting himself ready for it.
It augurs well to discover more generally established what the French
call the Hotel of God. The Hospital used to be in the same class with
the Hospice. It was originally an outgrowth of the church, through the
element of charity, very much as we find it on missionary ground in
foreign lands. There was usually a chapel included in the construction.
It seemed on review to be the strong and rugged that were struck down,
while the semi-invalids appeared to live to ripe old age. He who wins in
the first round, does not always seem to come out, in the final test,
as the best man. The battle is not to the strong. Like Romulus and Remus
placed in a trough, cast adrift on the Tiber, nourished in the marshes
by a wolf, some persons seem to be strengthened by the worst things to
which they are exposed, while others succumb at their approach. It is
hard to pass this same matter over as applied to the college without
setting down outstanding illustrations. Some who were distinctly strong,
like the pendulum of a dying clock soon passed away.
"_A Flood of Thoughts Comes O'er Me_"
It became a great trial to me that our forbears never half believed one
of the most eloquent and profound statements of the inspired volume.
Recognizing, in faith, these beautiful words, what a mockery is
artificial light, and how unnecessary a watcher. "Surely the darkness
shall cover me, the night shall be light about me, the darkness and the
light are both alike." When a soul had left its body and is wearing a
crown, it was then the custom, when one of our neighbors had been
invited, to be a guest in heaven, for some one of us who felt tenderly
and neighborly to offer to serve as a watcher. It was then counted good
form for someone other than a member of the family to keep awake
throughout the night and that, in no remote part of the house out of
which the spiritual world had just received a tenant. It was then the
rule of my life never to resist my good impulses and to me it seemed to
fall to render this melancholy duty which struck into my soul with
terror. My fright, I suppose would have been less if I had lived a
better life. I noticed the rattling of the plastering over head.
[Illustration: THE GROUNDS OF THE BELOVED COLLEGE]
"Deep horror then my vitals froze."
I did not know that a bureau with its closed drawers contained so much
creaking. It seemed a self-starter. A mid-night lunch had been made
ready. I was usually fond of the pleasures of the table, but this repast
was the least welcome of any I ever tasted. I needed no artificial aid
to keep awake. I was far removed from drowsiness. My eyes would not be
surprised at anything in that presence except sleep. This night seemed
as much too long as all other nights seemed to me too short, but I sat
it out alone till the day, to my inexpressible relief, dawned over the
distant fields. Soon after I reached my room some of my associates
called me to wake me for breakfast. "You didn't suppose I was asleep,
did you?" Lord Brougham pretended to die in order to read what was said
of him in the papers. At Athens, Alabama, a minister preached his own
funeral sermon for he said, "I know my own faults and my own good points
as nobody else knows and I am not going to have people after I am gone
talking of a thing they don't understand." The whole affair was arranged
as if it had been the real thing, with the minister's family in the pew
in deepest mourning. By very much of what I had been reading, and by
more, that all along I had been hearing, while my motives were well
enough in volunteering my services as a watcher, yet I was surprised to
find how ill-fitted I was for the office. The minds of ingenuous
childhood would not now be subjected to quite so much frightfulness.
There seems to be something in them when well stirred up, that responds
with fearful alacrity to that kind of address. It can be found any time
in children if one has the lamentable disposition to try to appeal to
it. By an unintended combination of circumstances I had been supplied
with uncommon numbers of ghost stories until I was afraid to be out
alone, particularly in some localities where it was extra dark.
On leaving the neighbor's house for home I would induce someone to stand
in the door until I, after moving rapidly, should shout back that I was
safe.
_Stepping Into the Past_
The bogy-man in the cellar is not conjured with in governing children
now as much as formerly, still a child likes those plays best which give
a good deal of exercise to the imagination. So on the other hand the
ills we imagine afflict us most. The microscope magnifies the object
without altering it. How the thoughts of those troubled times of long
ago come trooping over the hills and valleys of memory after so many
years have been passed to our account in the book of the Recording
Angel. There are some sights that we can never forget. Some occurrences
are so scenic and suggestive that they come home unbidden to every man's
heart and are with him in the market and on the street.
_The College Empire_
When I first came on the campus the students' rooms were bare and
uninviting. No freshman's room was carpeted. A mat in front of his desk
and one in front of his bed, a very plain bureau, three or four chairs,
a wash-stand, pail, pitcher and bowl, and a few text-books made the
outfit. An apartment was featured best by what it did not have. We lived
the simple life. "In those days there was no king in Israel, but every
man did that which was right in his own eyes." The new president came in
the morning of an opening educational era, during which more
improvements have been made than occurred in long centuries before. With
great distinction he served his day and its sun sank before the horizon
in its evening splendor and that of his youthful, buoyant successor rose
in its morning glory. The initial steps or incidents in the election of
the present sovereign if ever known are now lost to history. The event
was so spontaneous and natural that we can only say in scriptural
language, Now it came to pass. The vote was only a memorandum. It was
what everyone wanted, everybody expected.
In my day we all knew one another. A college may be good as an
institution of learning and still fall far short of supplying what we
feel this elite college did for us. The elective system has not been
wholly a blessing. If left to himself, a student might elect to follow
the line of the least resistance. In one of these institutions the whole
class never meets together after the first day for any academic purpose.
The class is no longer the social unit it once was. No two men take
exactly the same course.
_Just How it Feels_
A boy's relation to his home is changed the instant his feet betake
themselves to classic ways. His face is set toward an independent
career. It is a beginning of a detachment and the home is behind this
program and perhaps without quite recognizing all the results and
sacrifices that are involved. No family is ever again quite the same
after it has a son graduated from college. The plane of life is lifted
all around. The kind of atmosphere in which he must live and move and
have his being, for four years, will affect him. The traditions and the
predominant type of student character will give him a pull which it is
hoped is in the right direction. Where the majority of the students are
disposed to do right, and to make a serious use of their great
opportunities, the chances are that the graduate will feel his life long
that he paid his tuition to the college, when he was for a fact most
indebted to his associates. All testimony shows that students recite to
the faculty and learn from one another. We are well beyond the old
heresy that a boy goes to college for his mental training, enters
society for his social life, and the church for his religious
development. The college ideal, as stated, is to give a boy opportunity
to do for himself the best he can do, also to do for each student the
best that can be done for him and to give all possible advantage to the
poorest student.
_Just Plain Friends_
We all drank at the same fountain and felt the thrill of the same
spirit. There was no caste or social class. We may well doubt whether
higher life success would have attended us, if we launched from a
different port. An earnest endeavor was made to put a young man on an
equality with the demands of his time. It undertook to furnish a basis
from which it was possible for him to advance himself to that level of
usefulness, in his generation, to which his native gifts relegated him.
The college cannot undertake to supply brains. In the presence of
stupidity even the gods are powerless. I do not need to praise the
college. As Cromwell said of his government, "This is a thing that
speaks loudly for itself." Webster made, in the greatest address ever
delivered to a jury, much of the proverb, Murder will out, but this is
no peculiarity of murder. Character will out, mental discipline will
out, education will out, and the lack of education will out. Without
this item some vocations cannot be entered at all, and there is no
vocation in which the mental training would not be a fine additional
equipment.
_Rekindled Fires_
At my Alma Mater, on revisiting the earth, in conversation with friends
the inquiry was altogether natural, at Commencement, as to how I would
approach things, if I were to begin my studies again. I would try to
remember that it is the intensity of the work that does the good. A
horse needs, in practice, to be tested at his top speed. He must have
the occasional fast mile to fit him for a real occasion. The mind
requires to be tasked. The faculties ought then to be alert. The need is
of "sinewy thinking." Gird up the loins of the mind. Pull yourself
together. We read of One who, as he prayed, sweat. Study and have it
over. Dawdling over a newspaper is the arch enemy of all this. When one
reads he ought to read with attention. If, by this power, we throw our
whole minds upon an important subject, we make it a prompt and easy
matter of recollection. Genius is really intensity of thought, feeling,
emotion, activity. All the faculties are in earnest. "A man is not
educated, till he has the ability to summon, in case of emergency," said
Webster, "all his mental power in vigorous exercise to effect his
object." The great gain is in the undivided, intense mental power of
application. Be all there. Play hard. To spend two hours on a lesson
that could better be done in one is a suicidal process. The greatest
benefit of study is the trained power to concentrate the faculties. What
one sees, he ought to see strongly. The importance of this matter lies
in the fact, that the habits which a student acquires while pursuing his
studies, generally adhere to him through life.
If I could begin again, I would give my chief attention to disciplinary
study. If a person has a fair library, as every man and woman should
have, he would acquire information, daily, his life long. While a
student, his aim should be discipline. It is a vice for him to spend so
much time over fugitive ephemeral literature which is like the grass, in
the morning it flourisheth, in the evening it withereth. After hard
work, skimming over such gossipy literature as one finds in the papers
may restore tone to the mind but it is not to be classed as reading, but
as recreation. Its effect dies with the day that gave it birth.
Of all my studies, I have rejoiced most in the discipline acquired by
the study of Latin. If I could go back and acquire early a classical
enthusiasm I would make myself sure of the educational passion.
_Fortune Keeps Her Own Secrets_
There is a certain fluency of speech, fertility of expedient and power
of application which a student should cultivate for what Lord Coke
called the "occasion sudden." The appeal to students to aim at good
public speaking, while in college, and to awaken then and there, the
active powers of the soul, is based upon two observations: that Albert
Beveridge like recent orators showed his gait while still in his
university, and that such gifts are not ideal but practical and not
studied merely for their own sake but because of their connection with
our civil liberty. To attain an end so indispensable if, in my studies,
I was worked out to my limit, I would incline to the discussion of
questions that would not send me to the library but into the open air,
themes on which I could prepare myself during a stroll, subjects that I
could stick in the corner of a mirror to formulate while I shaved.
Why did not the negroes do more to help secure their own emancipation?
Can a man change his disposition?
Why do ministers that do not believe in the inspiration of the Bible use
a text? A man will take a text and explain it away. Why did he choose
it?
Is it the brain or the soul that does the thinking? Is our body the
agent or is it a living spirit that uses the organisms? Is it the
imagination whose wings uplift or am I at the center of the circle of my
faculties making use of them?
Is there any causal relation between justice and victory in arms?
_Some Social Features_
This student life establishes certain relationships both with the
institution, also with individuals which are felt to be the choicest
holding of a man's whole later life. The topaz of Ethiopia shall not
equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold. Here is a strong
illustration of how deep and enduring are the attachments of an eager
hearted boy. They are more ardent perhaps than they should have been,
but there they are, and the college gains thus a token of attachment
and tender recollection of unreturnable youth. The most exquisite, the
most unforeseen, the most compensative feature of my life has been, my
personal friendship with the professors. Some of them I admired
extravagantly. Silhouetted upon my memory for all time is my first sight
of Professor Leonard F. Parker. I remember a particular day when we
gathered somewhat early for a Sabbath service. Some of us who were to be
his pupils had no acquaintance with him even by sight. Assuming that the
leading scholar of the place would attend the meeting it was for us a
question of identification. Soon there came a man in the succession not
a farmer, possibly a resident clergyman, and some of us thought it might
be he. But something within me said "Query." I tried to make it into the
professor.
A good man doubtless, but I wanted to see something in this worshiper
that was not in him. He did not fill the picture. He did not make me
say, It is enough. Soon there came a man who needed no badge, no
signature, no guarantee. His face was an index of him. All of us joined
in a common feeling of relief. We felt his presence. We knew that this
was the man. The bearing of a professional man in those days was more
sedate than now, occasioned by what he thought to be due to his
professorship. He looked upon his office as a high and sacred calling,
and it met all the ends of his ambition if he could be, not teaching
students, but educating men and women. It is said of the Roman
conquerors that they were so used to victory that they carried on their
faces the secret of an imperial people who knew not defeat.
"_Fixing Up_"
There was an obvious neatness about him and a perfection of dress, which
usually requires an absence of anything which draws attention to itself.
He excelled all men whom I have ever known in the teaching profession
for enkindling among his pupils an ardent zeal in their literary
pursuits. A great personal force was needed in those days to teach
disciplinary studies only, in an effective manner, and to dominate the
industrial spirit and the trade spirit by those classical enthusiasms
which were the joy and ornament of his youth. Mercantilism was unbridled
in the general community, yet it is an acknowledged fact, that at the
beginning the responsibility of the teacher has much to do with the
success of the school. No teaching is worth much without enthusiasm, and
enthusiasm is generated by concentrating interest at a focal point. One
cannot teach for more than he is.
A little history is worth a great deal of opinion. By his unusual gifts,
by his out-reaching personal sympathies, by the individual impress of a
great teacher, many of his pupils became interested through him in the
classics. Let him be judged by his product. I never hear President Main
in one of those vigorous, fine-phrased, official statements, in language
impressive, copious and beautiful, the outward sign of an inward grace,
making a sort of an Iliad out of a routine college president's report,
without saying to myself and to others,--That power of statement,
discipline of mind, felicity of speech, the administration itself, if
you please, are the fruitage of patient discipline acquired in his early
and long study of Greek. Alexander of Macedon used to say that he owed
his life to his father, but to his teacher, Aristotle, a greater debt,
for it was that philosopher who taught him how to make the most of life.
While the ability to teach is a treasure committed to earthly vessels,
some are of finer clay than others.
_He Had no Pet Virtue_
The Professor was a natural leader, full of vision and initiative, whose
heart was in his work, and the old college impulse never left him, and
he represents a part of what has given a worthy name and character to
the college. A man gets to do what he is fitted to do. I do not believe
he will be allowed to come back from the other world to this but he will
hardly know what to do with himself when separated from those
interesting associations on which so much of his happiness depended. A
father or mother or both would come to town, wander about the place,
invariably in company with the object of their affection. These parents
are not first of all astronomical, or philosophical, or mathematical,
they are human, and they are not there to hear about the new water-works
or the freshly paved streets, or the perfect miracle of an artificial
lake. They are there because their treasure is, and a kind word spoken
to them about their young hopeful is like a spark of fire upon tinder.
These folks used to wait about the doors and walk the streets and hope
to throw themselves in the Professor's way, with the idea that he would
talk with them a little about their scion. I was once driving the
distance between two railroads and a dark night and a continuous
downpour of rain settled drearily upon me, and I was forced to stop at
random at a farm house, and beg for entertainment. Disposing of my case
in a few words, the family resumed its talk relative to a letter they
had received from the Professor about their descendant in whom were
centered great expectations. And when they had said everything that
could be said, someone, as if by accident, would pull a string and let
loose again the flood of talk about that letter. Someone, coming in, for
a moment, out of the storm, would divert the attention, and then they
would apply the flail again to that letter and thrash out some further
kernels of wheat that they had not at first noticed. The family, of
course, found out that I knew the Professor, and so, although I was to
start in the morning while it was still dark, the mother was
unexpectedly up, and had the table so spread, that she could at once sit
down, when I did, and talk over her happiness and the rewards of her
self-sacrifice in having a boy at college. She had hoped and believed
all that had been written, and yet it was a great comfort to have the
professor say it.
_A Disposition to Build Tabernacles_
He lived close to the people. When Christian, in the Pilgrim's Progress,
found himself in the City of Destruction, he departed speedily out of
it, whereas our professor would consider if the situation was
remediless. I was present when he, having given the best of his life to
the college, under the weight of his years, resigned. It was touching,
as a great American author has pointed out, to see the new attitude that
the community had taken toward him, putting him into a new relationship
and into a new atmosphere, in which it was recognized that he was
undeniably and irresistibly older than he had been. People had hardly
thought that he was not a permanent feature. The evidences of
Christianity stand very much in facts. I point to the fact of his
consistent fruitful life and to the fact of his triumphant peaceful
death. They make a fresh volume on the evidences of Christianity. I have
heard of a man who had one foot in the grave, but here was a man who had
one foot in heaven. Dear friend, and my father's friend, friend of my
youth, and all my later years, teacher, counselor, encourager, model of
my student life, to whom my heart was knit in all the ardor of the first
enthusiasm over the idea of going to college, to whom my obligations are
beyond computation, Thou hast thyself gone to sit at the feet of the
Great Teacher.