[Illustration: PROF. RICHARD M. SMITH.]
[Illustration: MAIN COLLEGE BUILDING, ASHLAND, 1868-1875.]
Rarely has such a combination of teaching ability been found in any college, or one which met the needs of the time more fully.
The name of the President had drawn from his far-away Southern home one of the most original characters the College ever had among its matriculates, John Hannon, of Montgomery, Ala.
JOHN HANNON'S SKETCH OF DR. DUNCAN.
"In the autumn of 1868 upon the train I first met Dr. James A. Duncan, as I was going to Ashland. Full-orbed, approaching his zenith, this pulpit star thus came into my sky. Though he has years since set behind the grassy hills of Hollywood, the light of his great character still lingers in the valleys and on the high places of my being.
"It is impossible in a sketch like this to give the full spectrum of a character so rich as that of Dr. Duncan. There were X-rays, delicate gleamings of light from his presence, that could be felt, but do not photograph themselves upon the plates of a biography. He was not a man easy to forget.
"There is a sense in which every man is a word of God, or a syllable of the word. But in some the divine articulation is not so distinct. Regarding humanity as a written word, such characters are what scholars would call a 'disputed text.' Not so with James A. Duncan. Looking upon him no man could doubt the authorship. The divine autograph was there in capital letters. A look at him shook our faith in man as an evolution. We felt that that man was a creation.
"Would I had a presence,' said one of our brainiest men to me. A lady of my congregation asked a friend in a Boston dining parlor who a certain man was, remarking that she knew he must be a distinguished person, for she said, 'He has a presence.' The man was Phillips Brooks.
"Dr. Duncan had a presence. Who will ever forget that Napoleonic build? That physique, the very motion of which was silent music.