COLLEGE AND SEMINARY
Henry Leland Chapman
It was in 1836, in the twenty-fourth year of his age, that Elijah Kellogg entered Bowdoin College as a Freshman. His father had been one of the earliest and firmest friends of the college. As one of the Cumberland County Association of Ministers he had joined in the petition to the General Court of Massachusetts for the establishment of a collegiate institution in the province of Maine. When in answer to the petition of the ministers, and of the Court of Sessions of Cumberland County, the college was incorporated in 1794, Mr. Kellogg was named as one of the first board of overseers. Four years later he became a trustee, and continued to hold that official relation to the college until 1824. During his boyhood, therefore, and before he cherished any purpose or desire to enjoy its privileges, Elijah must have heard, within the family circle, much about the college which was so great an object of interest and pride to his father, as it was, indeed, to the whole community. It was but natural, therefore, when his purpose was seriously formed to seek a college training in preparation for his father’s calling of the ministry, that Bowdoin, aside from its proximity to his home, should be the college of his choice. But his course collegeward was interrupted and delayed by various circumstances, and particularly by personal tastes that were quite other than scholastic. Always a lover of the sea, and delighting in the tales of sea life and adventure to which he listened from the lips of sailors themselves along the Portland wharves, it is not strange that the call of the sea sounded louder than any other in his ears. So, listening to the call, he shipped before the mast, and for three years lived the hard and perilous life of a sailor. It is true that the experience, which may have been useful to him in other ways also, was an admirable preparation for the brilliant service which he afterwards performed as chaplain of the Sailor’s Home in Boston, but in the meantime it made him late in entering upon his college life. It is to be said, however, that of his thirty classmates six were as old as himself.
Mrs. Eunice McClellan Kellogg.
Mother of Elijah Kellogg.
We must look to certain volumes of the Whispering Pines series, and particularly to the volumes entitled “The Spark of Genius,” “The Sophomores of Radcliffe,” and “The Whispering Pine,” for a picture of his college life, true in its general features, and graphic like everything from Mr. Kellogg’s pen. These books, which have been read with eager interest by so many generations of boys, describe Bowdoin College, its professors, students, customs, and manners as they were known to Elijah Kellogg during the years of his residence there from 1836 to 1840. If they seem to be devoted largely to a recital of pranks and mischief and practical jokes among the students, it is partly because such things made a stronger appeal to scheming brains, and youthful fellowship, and leisure hours in those days, before athletic sports enlisted, as they have since enlisted, the restless energy and high spirits and intense rivalry of college boys; and partly, also, it was because his native sense of humor and love of fun, his spirit of adventure and personal courage, constituted an ever present temptation to him to share or lead in enterprises which demanded wariness and cunning and pluck, and which promised the discomfiture of some boastful and unloved fellow-student, or the perplexed disapproval of the college authorities, or the entertainment of a college community always keenly appreciative of a diverting sensation. So alive was he to this phase of student activity, and so conspicuous was he among his mates for resourcefulness and courage, that he became, in the popular opinion of his time and in subsequent tradition, the hero of many an escapade with which he had no connection. One instance, however, of strenuous effort quite outside his college duties seems to be well authenticated, and will serve to show the kind of mischievous exploit which was attractive enough to enlist his cooperation.
The president of the college during the first three years of Kellogg’s course was a man of great dignity and reserve. He held himself quite aloof from the students, neither inviting nor allowing any freedom of social intercourse. Partly on this account he was unpopular with the student body, and the solemn reserve in which he intrenched himself seemed, in their eyes, to make any infringement, however slight, of his personal dignity particularly humorous. There was much irreverent laughter, therefore, when it was whispered about on one occasion that the silk hat which the president was accustomed to wear, and which seemed the very crown and symbol of his formal stateliness, had been stolen, and was in the hands of some of the students. When it came to the ears of Kellogg he remarked that if he knew the boys that had the hat he would put it on the top of the chapel spire. Of course the interesting information was not long withheld from him, and in the darkness of a showery night he climbed sturdily up by the slender and insecure pathway of the lightning-rod, and placed the hat on the very top, where, in the morning, it met the dismayed vision of the president, and received the boisterous salutations of the college. That was Kellogg’s contribution to the deed of mischief. To steal the hat was a petty and foolish trick, such as might be perpetrated by a half-witted person, a coward, or a thief; but to carry it through the darkness to the top of the chapel spire required a clear head, a stout heart, good muscle, and nerve, and these Elijah Kellogg possessed, both in youth and manhood.