Professor Chamberlain took charge of the Class of 1828 in Latin and Greek when they entered on their Junior year. As soon as our class met him in the east recitation-room—he being seated at a small table on his left, and the class in lines of a half-parallelogram extending on the right and in front of him—we felt that we had come under a noble teacher. Some of us who loved the languages that he taught, and also had become acquainted with the best of the upper classes, carried with us none other than very high anticipations of a most profitable and pleasant term of study. And so it proved. How he used to electrify us at times by repeating something that had just been recited, as at the close of the Agricola of Tacitus, his strongly marked face all lighted up, new significance and something like inspiration being given us, when with his deliberate, distinct, emphatic, rhythmical, rich utterance, flowed out that prophetic sentence in the world's literature, 'Quidquid ex Agricola amavimus, quidquid mirati sumus, manet mansurumque in animis hominum, in aeternitate temporum, in fama rerum!'
"I remember that while my class were in the Œdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles and the Medea of Euripides, I was suffering from weak eyes, and went to the recitation-room with no other preparation than that of hearing each lesson twice read to me by two different students, who did me the kindness to perform that service. But with Professor Chamberlain's luminous explanation and comment, no Greek of my whole college course more deeply interested and helped me.
"He heard the rehearsal of my Commencement oration, and some of his words on that occasion I have not ceased to remember with gratitude. Nor was I the only one who received from him words of encouragement that proved of most valuable service in our subsequent career. Still it was the moral element that constituted his highest power of influencing young men, and was his distinguishing personality. May I say, for one, that in this moral and spiritual personality he has again and again come to me since his departure, and been a present helper toward whatever of good I have attained in life.
"A single anecdote will serve to illustrate the love with which his pupils cherish his memory. I cannot but think that every survivor of my class must have some recollection of the fact, and share all my feelings in regard to it. He had been occasionally late at recitation, and the class, to give him a lesson of promptness, one morning having assembled as usual after service in chapel, and waited some four minutes past the hour, carried the vote to go to our rooms; and so, the professor just turning the corner, and hastening up the slope, and his approach being announced by some on the lookout, we dashed out, through the rear doors, or up the stairways, and not a solitary member of the class remained in the room. The next morning he was already there when we reached the place, made no remark on the occurrence of the previous day, and none of us could discern in him the faintest trace of displeasure. When, two years after we graduated, I heard of his death, I remembered a slight, hacking cough which he had, and that slightly bent, spare, though large and tall frame, and always placid face, and realized for the first time that what we imputed to him as a fault was the hindrance of disease, and possibly of sleepless nights; and I would have given a world for an opportunity to ask his forgiveness."[44]
[44] The writer did not know until a few years ago that he was related, though somewhat distantly, to the wife of Professor Chamberlain. He was personally acquainted with her from his Sophomore year. He then boarded and roomed at Mrs. President Brown's (Mrs. C.'s aunt). Her paternal great-grandfather, Rev. Nicholas Gilman, of Durham, N. H., and the writer's paternal great-grandfather (as well as maternal great-great-grandfather), Dr. Josiah Gilman, of Exeter, N. H., were brothers. He has felt, ever since he knew this fact, like having a clearer right of inheritance in Professor Chamberlain.
Another pupil says of Professor Chamberlain:
"He was well-proportioned, tall, active, and energetic. His expression was dignified and commanding. In his word there was power. Integrity marked all his life. His word was as good as his bond. His principles were firmly grasped and implicitly followed. His intellectual powers were of a high order. He impressed every acquaintance with his intellectual greatness. His discourse was lofty but impressive.
"His religious life was less marked in public. He united with no church, though he was a man of prayer and from his dying bed sent a religious message to the students."
From a reliable source we have the following notice of another of Dartmouth's eminent and honored teachers: