Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

John W. Webster gave lectures to the boys on chemistry and geology which they were compelled to attend. I think the latter the most tedious human compositions to which I ever listened. The doctor seemed a kind-hearted, fussy person. He was known to the students by the sobriquet of Sky-rocket Jack, owing to his great interest in having some fireworks at the illumination when President Everett was inaugurated. There was no person among the Faculty at Cambridge who seemed less likely to commit such a bloody and cruel crime as that for which he was executed. The only thing that I know which indicated insensibility was that when he was lecturing one day in chemistry he told us that in performing the experiment which he was then showing us a year or two before with some highly explosive gas a copper vessel had burst and a part of it had been thrown with great violence into the back of the bench where a row of students were sitting, but fortunately the student who sat in that place was absent that day and nobody was hurt. He added drily: "The President sent for me and told me I must be more careful. He said I should feel very badly indeed if I had killed one of the students. And I should."

There was nothing in my time equivalent to what used to be called a rebellion in the older days, and I believe no such event has occurred for the last fifty years. The nearest to it was a case which arose in the senior class when I was a freshman. One of the seniors, who was a rather dull-witted but well-meaning youth, concluded that it was his duty to inform the Faculty of offences committed by his classmates, a proceeding it is needless to say contrary to all the boys' sentiments as to honorable conduct. Some windows had been broken, including his. He informed the Faculty of the person who had broken them, who was rusticated for a short time as punishment. The next day being Saturday, this informer, dressed up in his best, was starting for Boston, when he was seized by six of his classmates and held under the College pump until he received a sound ducking. He seized the finger of one of them with his teeth and bit it severely, though it was protected somewhat by a ring. He complained of five of the six, who were forthwith suspended until the next Commencement, losing, of course, their rank in the class and their chances for taking part in the Commencement exercises. One of them, of whom he omitted to tell, was much disturbed by the omission and demanded of the informer why he left him out. He said that he had rather a pity for him, as he had already been suspended once and he supposed the new offence would lead to his being expelled. Whereupon he said, "I will give you some reason to tell of me," and proceeded to administer a sound caning. That was at once reported to the Faculty. The offender was expelled, and criminal proceedings had which resulted in a fine.

We had some delightful lectures from Longfellow on the literature of the Middle Ages. He read us some of his own original poems and some beautiful translations. All the substance of these lectures I think is to be found in his book entitled "The Poets and Poetry of the Middle Ages." I do not see that we gained anything of solid instruction by having them read to us that we could not have got as well by reading them. We had also a course of lectures from Jared Sparks on American history. They were generally dull and heavy, but occasionally made intensely interesting when he described some stirring event of the Revolutionary War. We hung breathless on his account of the treason of Arnold and its detection and the class burst out into applause when he ended,—a thing the like of which never happened in any time in College. There was a little smattering of instruction in modern languages, but it was not of much value. We had a French professor named Viau whom the boys tormented unmercifully. He spoke English very imperfectly, and his ludicrous mistakes destroyed all his dignity and rendered it impossible to maintain any discipline in the class. He would break out occasionally in despair, "Young zhentlemen, you do not respect me and I have not given you any reason to." A usual punishment for misconduct in those days was to deduct a certain number of the marks which determined rank from the scale of the offending student. M. Viau used to hold over us this threat, which, I believe, he never executed, "Young zhentlemen, I shall be obliged to deduce from you."

He was followed by the Comte de la Porte, a gentleman in bearing and of a good deal of dignity. The Count was asked one day by Nat Perry, a member of the class from New Hampshire who was very proud of his native State and always boasting of the exploits in war and peace of the people of New Hampshire, what sort of a French scholar M. Viau, his predecessor, was. The Count replied: "He was not a fit teacher for young gentlemen. He was an ignorant person from the Provinces. He did not have the Parisian accent. He did not know the French language in its purity. It would be as if somebody were to undertake to teach English who came from New Hampshire or some such place." The Count said this in entire innocence. It was received with a roar of laughter by the class, and the indignation and wrath of Perry may well be imagined.

Another instructor in modern languages was Dr. Bachi. He was a very accomplished gentleman. His translations of Italian poetry, especially of Dante and Tasso, were exquisite. It was like hearing a sweet and soft music to hear him read his beloved poets, and he had a singular gift of getting hold of the most sweet and mellifluous English words for his rendering. "And he did open his mouth, and from it there did come out words sweeter than honey." He once translated to us a passage in the Inferno where the damned are suspended, head downwards, with the burning flames resting upon the soles of their feet. "Ah," exclaimed Bachi, "they do curl up their toes."

My class is not one of the very famous classes of the College. Certainly it does not equal the class of 1802 or the class of 1829. But I think it was, on the whole, very considerably above the average. In it were several persons who became eminent scholars and teachers, and some who have been eminent in other walks of life. I think, on the whole, its two most distinguished members, entitled to hold a greater place than any others in the memory of future generations, were Dr. Calvin Ellis, Dean of the Medical Faculty of Harvard, who died in 1883, and Judge Nathan Webb, of the United States District Court of Maine, who died in 1902. Neither of these had very high rank in the class. The first half of the class used to have parts assigned at Commencement in those days. Ellis's part was very nearly the lowest of the first half. Webb's was higher. Webb entered college very young. He was quite small in his stature and was known all though college as "little Webb." He grew to a stature of about six feet after he left college. He did, I believe, some very hard work indeed in his senior year. Although universally liked and respected by his classmates, he was not regarded as among the eminent scholars. Ellis performed all his duties in College very fairly but did not seem to care much for rank or for scholarship until, in the senior year, some lectures on anatomy were delivered by old Dr. John C. Warren. Ellis was filled with enthusiasm, as were some of the other members of the class. He and I got a skull somewhere and studied bones, processes, and sutures, both meaning to be physicians. My zeal lasted but a few weeks. Ellis's never abated until his death. He was at the head of his profession in the country in his own department, became Dean of the Harvard Medical School, and was loved and revered by his numerous pupils as by the members of his profession. He was one of the most simple-hearted, affectionate, spotless and lovable of men. He died of a lingering and painful disease, never losing his courage and patience, or his devoted interest in science. Webb was exceedingly fond of his home, not being very ambitious of higher office, but content to discharge ably and faithfully and to the universal satisfaction of the profession and the public, the duty of the important place he held. I have seen a good many public men from Maine of both parties. They all unite in this estimate of Judge Webb. There is no doubt that if he had been willing he would long ago have been made Judge of the Circuit Court, and then if the seat on the Supreme Court of the United States held by Mr. Justice Gray of the New England Circuit had become vacant, I suppose he would have been called from the Circuit Bench to that Court by almost universal consent.

Three persons, Child, Lane and Short, all very distinguished scholars in after life, took their place at the head of the class in the beginning. Two of them held the same place when they graduated. Short was outstripped by Edwin Moses Bigelow, who is now living, a lawyer, in Boston. He entered college from the country not so well fitted when he entered as most of the class. But he made his way by an indefatigable diligence until he graduated with great distinction, the third scholar, going a little above Short.

Child was a man of great genius. He seems to me now, as I look back upon him, to have been as great a man at seventeen when he entered college, as he was when he died. He was the best writer, the best speaker and the best mathematician, the most accomplished person in his knowledge of general literature in the class,—indeed, I suppose, in college,—in his day. He was probably equalled, and I dare say more lately excelled, by Lane as a Latin scholar, and by Short as a Greek scholar. He was a great favorite with the class. He spent his life in the service of the College. He was tutor for a short time and soon succeeded Channing as Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. He became one of the most eminent scholars in the country in early English literature and language. He edited a collection of ballads, Little & Brown's edition of the British Poets, and was a thorough student of Shakespeare and Chaucer. To the elucidation of the text of Chaucer he made some admirable contributions. He was shy and diffident, full of kindness toward persons whom he knew and to children, and of sympathy with persons who were in sorrow, but whimsical, grotesque, and apt to take strong prejudices against persons whom he did not know. I suppose some of the best of our American men of letters of late years would have submitted their productions to the criticism of Child as to a master.

Next to him stood Lane, the learned Latin scholar. I do not believe that anybody ever went through Harvard College who performed four years of such constant and strenuous labor. What he did in his vacations I do not know, but there was no minute lost in the term time. It is said that he never missed attendance on morning and evening prayers but once. The class were determined that Lane should not go through college without missing prayers once. So one night a cord was fastened to the handle of his door and attached to the rail of the staircase. But Lane succeeded in wrenching open the door and got to morning prayers in time. He was the monitor, whose duty it was to mark the students who were absent from prayers and who were punished for absence by a deduction from their rank and, if the absences were frequent enough, by a more severe penalty. The next time the measures were more effective. Lane's chum, Ellis, was in the conspiracy. The students bored holes carefully into the door and into the jamb by the side and took a quantity of hinges and screwed them carefully on to the door and the jamb. When Lane got ready to start for prayers in the morning, he found it impossible to open the door. As soon as he discovered what was the trouble, he seized his hatchet and undertook to cut his way out. His chum, Ellis, who had remained quietly in bed, sprang out of bed and placed his back against the door and declared that the door of his room should not be hewn down in that manner. Lane was obliged to desist. He however took his monitor's book, marked himself and his chum absent, and submitted. There were a good many such pranks played by the boys in those days, in the spirit of a harmless and good-natured mischief. I do not know whether the College has improved in the particular or no. I do not think anybody in my day would have defaced the statue of John Harvard.

Whether Lane will go farther down on the path to immortality as the author of the admirable Latin Grammar to which he gave so much of his life or as author of the song, "The Lone Fish Ball," posterity alone will determine.