Every professor's daughter, every woman from a university family, can
see it all. The whole scholastic and domestic, studious and tender
life comes back. Faculty meeting! We wait for the tired professor who
had the latest difference to settle with his colleagues, or the newest
breach to soothe, or the favorite move to push; how late he is! He
comes in softly, haggard and spent, closing the door so quietly that
no one shall be wakened by this midnight dissipation. The woman who
loves him most anxiously--be it wife or be it daughter--is waiting for
him. Perhaps there is a little whispered sympathy for the trouble
in the faculty which he does not tell. Perhaps there is a little
expedition to the pantry for a midnight lunch.
My first recollections of Professor Park give me his tall, gaunt,
but well-proportioned figure striding up and down the gravel walks
in front of the house, two hours before time for faculty meeting, in
solemn conclave with my father. The two were friends--barring those
interludes common to all faculties, when professional differences are
in the foreground--and the pacing of their united feet might have worn
Andover Hill through to the central fires. For years I cultivated an
objection to Professor Park as being the chief visible reason why we
had to wait for supper.
I remember his celebrated sermons quite well. The chapel was always
thronged, and--as there were no particular fire-laws in those days on
Andover Hill--the aisles brimmed over when it was known that Professor
Park or Professor Phelps was to preach. I think I usually began with
a little jealous counting of the audience, lest it should prove bigger
than my father's; but even a child could not long listen to Professor
Park and not forget her small affairs, and all affairs except the
eloquence of the man.
Great, I believe it was. Certain distinguished sermons had their
popular names, as "The Judas Sermon," or "The Peter Sermon," and drew
their admirers accordingly. He was a man of marked emotional nature,
which he often found it hard to control. A skeptical critic might have
wondered whether the tears welled, or the face broke, or the voice
trembled, always just at the right moment, from pure spontaneity. But
those who knew the preacher personally never doubted the genuineness
of the feeling that swept and carried orator and hearers down. We do
not hear such sermons now.
Professor Park has always been a man of social ease and wit. The last
time I saw him, at the age of eighty-five, in his house in Andover,
I thought, one need not say, "has been;" and to recall his brilliant
talk that day gives me hesitation over the past tense of this
reminiscence. On the whole, with the exception of Doctor Holmes, I
think I should call Professor Park the best converser--at least among
eminent _men_--whom I have ever met.
He has always been a man very sensitive to the intellectual values
of life, and fully inclined perhaps to approach the spiritual through
those. It is easy to misunderstand a religious teacher of this
temperament, and his admiring students may have sometimes done so.
One in particular I remember to have heard of who neglected the
lecture-room to cultivate upon his own responsibility the misson work
of what was known as Abbott Village. To the Christian socialism of our
day, the misery of factory life might seem as important for the
future clergyman as the system of theology regnant in his particular
seminary--but that was not the fashion of the time; at all events, the
man was a student under the Professor's orders, and the orders were:
keep to the curriculum; and I can but think that the Professor was
right when he caustically said:
"That ---- is wasting his seminary course in what _he calls doing
good_!"
Sometimes, too, the students used to beg off to go on book-agencies,
or to prosecute other forms of money-making; and of one such Professor
Park was heard to say that he "sacrificed his education to get the
means of paying for it."
I am indebted to Professor Park for this: "Professor Stuart and myself
were reluctant to release them from their studies. Professor Stuart
remarked of one student that he got excused _every_ Saturday for the
purpose of going home for a _week_, and always stayed a _fortnight_."
The last time that I saw Professor Park he told me a good story.
It concerned the days of his prime, when he had been preaching
somewhere--in Boston or New York, I think--and after the audience was
dismissed a man lingered and approached him.
"Sir," said the stranger, "I am under great obligations to you. Your
discourse has moved me greatly. I can truly say that I believe I shall
owe the salvation of my soul to you. I wish to offer, sir, to
the seminary with which you are connected, a slight tribute of my
admiration for and indebtedness to you." The gentleman drew out his
purse.
"I waited, breathless," said Professor Park, with his own tremendous
solemnity of manner; "I awaited the tribute of that grateful man. At
what price did he value his soul? I anticipated a contribution for the
seminary which it would be a privilege to offer. At what rate did
my converted hearer price his soul?--Hundreds? Thousands? Tens
of thousands? With indescribable dignity the man handed to me--a
five-dollar bill!"