He had a pretty wit in conversation, and a power of repartee before which many an antagonist went down. A celebrated American causeur once attacked him as a Democrat. "Yes," answered MacVeagh, "I am a Democrat and know it. You are a Democrat and don't know it. You have just been made President of a great railroad corporation. The stock sells to-day at a hundred and twenty; but before you have been President three years, you will have brought it within reach of the humblest citizen."
An unfulfilled prophecy, but that is what makes prophecy so useful as an instrument of debate. Only time can prove it false.
These men and many more gave distinction to the class. Randall Gibson, of Louisiana, afterward Confederate General and United States Senator, cannot be omitted from the briefest catalogue. He was one of a small band of Southerners at Yale. When you came to know him you understood what the South means by the word gentleman; and by its application of the title to the best of its own people, or to the ruling class in the South as a whole. Already, of course, and even in this younger brood, the clash of interests and sentiments, the "prologue to the omen coming on," the strained relations between South and North, were visible, and vexatious enough in social intercourse. Randall Gibson was saturated with Southern ideas, and perhaps had the prejudices of his race, but he kept them to himself or did not impart them to us of the North. He lived in the upper air, yet he looked down on nobody. There was no more popular man, yet no man who held himself so completely aloof from the familiarities common enough as between classmates.
In after life, from the havoc of war and other causes, he suffered much and bore disaster with courage. He was a man with reference to whom it is possible, and was always possible, to use the much-abused word chivalrous, with the certainty it could not be misunderstood. When he died there passed away a beautiful example of a type common in literature, rare in life, rarest of all in this generation, the grand seigneur.
There was lately an Englishman, Earl Spencer, whom Randall Gibson resembled: slightly in appearance, closely in those essential traits which go to the making of character. The same urbanity; the same considerateness to others; the same loyalty of nature; the same shining courage; the same unfailing effort to conform to high ideals. Both men had the pride of race and of descent. In both it turned to fine effects. I have known Lord Spencer to submit—I may be forgiven this distant allusion—to what can only be called an extortion rather than engage in a legal controversy he thought undignified, yet out of which he would have come victorious. I have known Randall Gibson to accept the verdict of fate, the award of undeserved adversity, rather than defend himself when his success might have exposed his comrades to censure. The world may call it in both of them quixotic, but the world would be a much better place to live in if quixotry of this sort were commoner than it is. Neither of these two men railed against the world, or complained of its ethical standard. All they did was to have each a standard of his own and to govern their own lives accordingly.
CHAPTER III
YALE PROFESSORS—HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
The three Yale professors whose names after all these years stand out most clearly to me are Thacher, Hadley, and Porter. Professor Thacher taught Latin. They used to say he knew Tacitus by heart—perhaps only a boyish emphasis upon his knowledge of the language and literature. He was, at any rate, a good Latinist, and a good teacher. What was perhaps more rare, he was a genial companion, to whom the distance between professor and pupil was not impassable. He won our sympathies because he gave us his; and our admiration, and almost our affection, went with our sympathies. He was one of the few college dignitaries upon whom the student feels himself privileged to look back as a friend; for on his side the spirit of friendly kindness governed the relations between us.