In reading these books, which tell the substantial history of his life at Bowdoin, it is quite evident that, with all the interest he took in the pastimes and pranks of his associates, he was not unmindful of the high and serious purpose of a college course. He maintained a consistent ideal of personal integrity and helpfulness and truth. It is the repeated testimony of those who were in college with him that his influence upon his fellow-students was in a high degree stimulating and wholesome. “He was,” says one who knew him well in the intimacy of college association, “universally popular, but he had his own chosen favorites, and one characteristic of him was his strong personal affection for them. His soul burned with love to those whom he loved. This was one secret of his power for good, for his influence upon them was always good.” An unaffected scorn of what was mean or false, and an eagerness to recognize and to make the most of every good and generous trait in his companions, were as characteristic of him as was his light-hearted, fun-loving disposition, and it is easy to see why he won both the respect and love of those who were admitted to his friendship.
These engaging qualities of his youth were no less those of his age, and they made him throughout life the friend of boys and the favorite of boys. He never lost the spirit of sympathy and comradeship with young men, and as his home, during the later years of his life, was not far from the college that he loved, he had a double motive to revisit, from time to time, the scene of those labors and frolics and friendships which he had so charmingly depicted in the Whispering Pine books. Accordingly he presented himself, now and then, either unexpectedly or upon invitation, at the door of some undergraduate member of his college fraternity, the Alpha Delta Phi, and became, for as long as he would stay, a welcome and honored guest.
It did not take long for the news to spread that Elijah Kellogg was in college; and then the hospitable room would be visited by many callers, eager to greet the shy, weather-beaten little man, whose heart was always warm for boys, and even the mazy wrinkles of whose face seemed to speak less of age than of kindness. And by the evening lamp an interested circle of students forgot the morrow’s lessons as they listened to stories of olden time, and to quaint words of counsel and comment as they fell from the visitor’s lips. When the circle finally dissolved, and Mr. Kellogg and his entertainers were left alone, a psalm, which seemed somehow to gain new meaning from his reading of it, and a simple earnest prayer, brought the long evening to a fitting and memorable close.
It is interesting, moreover, to notice, as an evidence of the profound regard and affection which the Bowdoin students felt for Mr. Kellogg, that when, in 1901, they published a volume of Bowdoin tales, no other dedication of the book was thought of than the one which inscribes it to the memory of Elijah Kellogg, “who celebrated his Alma Mater in story, honored her by practical piety, and won the hearts of her boys, his brethren.” If he was not eminent in the prescribed studies of the college, neither was he neglectful of them, nor unfaithful to them. Perhaps his enjoyment of college fellowships and his love of fun interfered to some extent with his devotion to the classics and mathematics, which made up a large part of the curriculum, and, in addition, the necessity under which he lay of providing for his own expenses must have diverted a part of his energies from study to manual toil. But whether at work, at play, or at study, he was hearty and resourceful. An incident, as told by himself, illustrates this trait of his character, and, incidentally, introduces the president whose sombre dignity provoked the stealing and subsequent disposal of his hat, as already related.
“I had to work my way through college,” said Mr. Kellogg, “and I boarded with a woman named Susan Dunning. I came to her house one Saturday. There was a deep snow on the ground, and college was to open Monday. She was feeling very blue because her well-sweep had broken. I told her not to mind, I’d fix it. The snow was too deep to get the cattle out, so I took a sled, and going to a wood-lot cut a big, heavy pole, it took a big one, too, for an old well-sweep. I put it on the sled, and tried to haul it back; but the long end dragging in the deep snow made that impossible. So, instead of hauling it, I took hold of the end and started pushing it home. It was hard work, but to make it worse President Allen met me and remarked, ‘Well, Kellogg, I have heard of putting the cart before the horse, but I never saw it done before;’ then he burst into a hearty laugh, and that’s the only time I ever saw him even smile in all the years I knew him.”
Besides President Allen, who was a man of learning and piety, as well as soberness, and whose single laugh, as chronicled by Mr. Kellogg, may perhaps be extenuated on the ground that it was indulged in before the term began, it was a notable group of men under whose influence and instruction Mr. Kellogg came during his residence at Bowdoin. There was Professor Alpheus S. Packard, whose elegant culture and kindly heart and beautiful face relieved the tedium of the Greek class-room, and impressed themselves upon the grateful memories of not less than sixty classes of Bowdoin students. There was Professor Thomas C. Upham, the quaint and shy philosopher, who had in himself so much of the mystic and seer combined with the patient metaphysical analyst that it sent him from time to time into bursts of religious song, and assured his name an honored place among the hymn-writers as well as among the philosophers. There was Professor Samuel P. Newman, who, by precept and criticism, imparted as much as can be imparted of the art of rhetoric, in which Mr. Kellogg was to become so much of a proficient. There was Professor William Smyth, rugged, impetuous, and true, an apostle of abolition, an enthusiastic champion of popular education and, indeed, of every good cause, and, above all, a profound and famous mathematician, about whom Mr. Kellogg relates the somewhat apocryphal story of the “Mathematician in Shafts,” not, as may be seen, to suggest ridicule, but in a sort of fond and amused recognition of his unique and vigorous personality. And finally, not to make the catalogue too long, there was Professor Parker Cleaveland, the distinguished scholar and teacher of chemistry and mineralogy, and a man of idiosyncrasies as striking as were his gifts. In a beautiful memorial sonnet Longfellow said of him:—
“Among the many lives that I have known
None I remember more serene and sweet,