"Their answers are now before me. All tell me I can graduate in two years. They are all brief, business notes, but President Hopkins concludes with this sentence: 'If you come here we shall be glad to do what we can for you.' Other things being so nearly equal, this sentence, which seems to be a kind of friendly grasp of the hand, has settled that question for me. I shall start for Williams next week."
It was at the close of the summer term in 1854 that James presented himself before President Hopkins for examination. He is described at this time "as a tall, awkward youth, with a great shock of light hair, rising nearly erect from a broad, high forehead, and an open, kindly, and thoughtful face, which showed no traces of his long struggle with poverty and privation."
He passed the examination without difficulty, and soon became a great favorite with his class in spite of his shabby clothes and Western provincialisms. "Old Gar" and the "Ohio giant" were the names by which he was best known in college, and a classmate says of him that "he immediately took a stand above all his companions for accurate scholarship, and won high honors as a writer, reasoner, and debater."
The beautiful, mountainous scenery about Williamstown was a constant delight to the young Westerner. He would frequently climb to the top of Greylock and feast his eyes upon the magnificent panorama below. He was no longer obliged to work at the carpenter's bench, or perform the duties of janitor, and these long walks gave him needful exercise as well as pleasant recreation.
President Hopkins became greatly interested in the earnest, enthusiastic student. The "friendly hand-grasp" was extended to him in many ways, and, when the summer vacation came, he offered him the free use of the college library.
James gladly availed himself of this privilege, and browsed among the books to his heart's content. It was the first time in his life that he had ever found leisure to read the works of Shakespeare, consecutively. During the summer vacation he not only read and thoroughly studied the plays, but committed large portions of them to memory. He also varied his heavier reading with works of fiction, allowing himself one novel a month. Dickens and Thackeray were favorite authors, and Tennyson's poems were read with ever-increasing pleasure.
He completed his classical studies the first year he was at Williamstown, as he had entered far in advance of the other pupils. He then took up German as an elective study, and, in the space of a few months, had made such rapid progress that he could read Goethe and Schiller, and converse with fluency.
In the "Williams Quarterly," a magazine published by the students, James took great interest, and was a frequent contributor both in prose and poetry.
The following poem, entitled "Memory," he wrote the last year he was at Williams College:—
"'Tis beauteous night, the stars look brightly down
Upon the earth, decked in her robe of snow,
No light gleams at the window save my own,
Which gives its cheer to midnight and to me
And now with noiseless step sweet Memory comes,
And leads me gently through her twilight realms
What poet's tuneful lyre has ever sung,
Or delicatest pencil e'er portrayed
The enchanted shadowy land where Memory dwells?
It has its valleys, cheerless lone and drear,
Dark shaded by the mournful cypress tree,
And yet its sunlit mountain tops are bathed
In heaven's own blue. Upon its craggy cliffs,
Robed in the dreamy light of distant years,
Are clustered joys serene of other days,
Upon its gently sloping hillsides bend
The weeping willows o'er the sacred dust
Of dear departed ones, and yet in that land,
Whene'er our footsteps fall upon the shore,
They that were sleeping rise from out the dust
Of death's long silent years, and round us stand,
As erst they did before the prison tomb
Received their clay within its voiceless halls
The heavens that bend above that land are hung
With clouds of various hues some dark and chill
Surcharged with sorrow, cast then sombre shade
Upon the sunny, joyous land below,
Others are floating through the dreamy air,
White as the falling snow their margins tinged
With gold and crimson hues, then shadows fall
Upon the flowery meads and sunny slopes,
Soft as the shadows of angel's wing
When the rough battle of the day is done.
And evening's peace falls gently on the heart,
I bound away across the noisy years,
Unto the utmost verge of Memory's land,
Where earth and sky in dreamy distance meet,
And Memory dim with dark oblivion joins;
Where woke the first-remembered sounds that fell
Upon the ear in childhood's early morn;
And wandering thence, along the rolling years,
I see the shadow of my former self
Gliding from childhood up to man's estate.
The path of youth winds down through many a vale
And on the brink of many a dread abyss,
From out whose darkness comes no ray of light,
Save that a phantom dances o'er the gulf,
And beckons toward the verge. Again the path
Leads o'er a summit where the sunbeams fall;
And thus in light and shade, sunshine and gloom,
Sorrow and joy, this life-path leads along."