Part 10 (1/2)

”Sometimes the novice in crime thinks himself ready to act when he is not; as appears from his hesitancy and reluctance when the moment for action arrives. If, however, this unexpected recoil of his nature does not induce him to change his purpose altogether, he knows but too well how to supply the defect in training for sin. If we could look into his heart, we should find him at his accursed rehearsals again. A few more lessons, and the blush and the shudder will pa.s.s away, never to return.”

This is tame enough in the recital. But I dare say there are old men who will read these pages to whom it will bring back the never-forgotten scenes of more than fifty years ago.

The Doctor had a great gift of sententious speech, not only in his written discourses, but in his ordinary conversation or his instruction from the professor's chair. He was speaking one day of Combe and of something disrespectful he had said about the English metaphysicians. ”What does Mr. Combe mean?”

said the Doctor. ”I make no apology for the English metaphysicians.

They have made their mistakes. They have their shortcomings.

But they are surely ent.i.tled to the common privilege of Englishmen --to be judged by their peers.” He was speaking one day of some rulers who had tried to check the rising tide of some reform by persecuting its leaders. ”Fools!” said the Doctor.

”They thought if they could but wring the neck of the crowing c.o.c.k it would never be day.”

One of the delightful characters and humorists connected with Harvard was Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles, tutor in Greek. He was a native of Thessaly, born near Mount Pelion and educated in the convent of the Greek Church on Mount Sinai.

It is said, although such instances are rare, that he was of the purest Greek blood. At any rate, his face and head were of the Greek type. He was a man of wonderful learning, --I dare say the best Greek scholar of his generation, whether in Europe or America. He was a very simple-hearted person in dealing with ordinary affairs. But his conversation and his instruction in the cla.s.s-room were full of wit and sense.

He used to tell a story, whether of his father or his grandfather I am not sure, that one night very late he was sitting in his warehouse alone when two men entered and told him they were come to kill him. He asked them why they wished to kill him, and they told him that they had been hired by an enemy of his. ”Well,” said the old man, ”what are you to be paid?”

They told him the sum. He said: ”I will give you twice as much to kill him.” Accordingly they accepted the offer and went away, leaving the old fellow alive, kept their bargain with him and killed his enemy.

Sophocles had a great love of little children and a curious love of chickens which he treated as pets and liked to tame and to play with, squatting down on the ground among them as if he were a rooster himself. It is said that during his last sickness the doctor directed that he should have chicken broth. He indignantly rejected it, and declared he would not eat a creature that he loved.

In what I have said about Professor Channing I am describing him and his method in instruction faithfully as it seemed to me at the time. It is quite possible I may be wrong. I am sure that the better scholars and the youths who were much better in every way than I was at that time of my life who were his pupils will dissent from my opinion and be shocked at what I say. So it is quite likely that I am in fault and not he. I have read again lately his book on Rhetoric and Oratory since what I said a little while ago was dedicated, and I wish to reaffirm my high opinion of the book. For fresh, racy and correct style, for clear perception and exquisite literary taste, it is one of the best books on the subject, as it one of the best books on any subject ever written by an American. His mistake was, in large measure, the prevalent mistake of the College in his time,--the use of ridicule and severity instead of sympathy as a means of correcting the faults incident to youth. It was the fault of the College, both of instructors and of the students. Dr. Walker in one of his public addresses speaks with commendation of ”the storm of merciless ridicule” which overwhelms young men who are addicted to certain errors which he is criticising.

The Latin professor was Charles Beck, Ph.D. He was a native of Heidelberg. He had been compelled to leave Prussia because of his love of liberty. He had studied theology, and had published a treatise on gymnastics, in which he was accomplished.

We read with him Terence and Plautus, the Medea of Seneca, Horace, and probably some Latin prose, which I have forgotten.

He was a very learned Latin scholar. I do not know whether he cared anything about poetry or eloquence or the philosophy of the Roman authors or no. Certainly he did nothing to indicate to us that he had any such interest or to stimulate any such interest in his pupils. He was strict to harshness in dealing with his cla.s.s. The only evidence of enthusiasm I ever witnessed in Dr. Beck was this: He brought into the cla.s.sroom one day an old fat German with very dirty hands and a dirty s.h.i.+rt.

He had a low forehead and a large head with coa.r.s.e curling hair which looked as if it had not seen a comb or brush for a quarter of a century. We looked with amazement at this figure. He went out before the recitation was over. But Dr. Beck said to us: ”This is Dr. ----, gentlemen. He is a most admiwable scholar.” (This was the Doctor's p.r.o.nunciation of the r.) ”He has wead Cicewo through every year for nearly fifty years for the sake of settling some important questions.

He has discovered that while necesse est may be used indifferently either with the accusative and infinitive, or with ut with the subjunctive, necesse ewat can only be used before ut with the subjunctive. I should think it well worth living for to have made that discovery.”

I suppose we all thought when we graduated that Dr. Beck was a man of harsh and cold nature. But I got acquainted with him later in life and found him one of the most genial and kind-hearted of men. He was a member of the Legislature.

He was a Free Soiler and an Abolitionist, liberally contributing to the Sanitary Commission, and to all agencies for the benefit of the soldiers and the successful prosecution of the war.

He came vigorously to the support of Horace Mann in his famous controversy with Mr. Webster. Mann had vigorously attacked Webster, and Webster in return had spoken of Mann as one of that cla.s.s of persons known among the Romans as Captatores Verborum, which he supposed to mean one of those nice persons who catch up other person's words for the sake of small criticism and fault-finding. Mr. Mann replied that Webster was wrong in his Latin, and the words Captatores Verborum meant toad- eaters, or men who hang on the words of great men to praise and flatter them, of which he found some conspicuous modern examples among Webster's supporters. Professor Felton, the Greek professor, who was a staunch friend of Webster, attacked Mann and charged him with ignorance of Latin. But Dr. Beck came to the rescue, and his authority as a Latin scholar was generally conceded to outweigh that of Webster and Felton put together.

One of the most brilliant men among the Faculty was Professor Benjamin Peirce. Undoubtedly he was the foremost American mathematician of his time. He dwelt without a companion in the lofty domain of the higher mathematics.

A privacy of glorious light is thine.

He was afterward the head of the Coast Survey. He had little respect for pupils who had not a genius for mathematics, and paid little attention to them. He got out an edition of Peirce's Algebra while I was in college. He distributed the sheets among the students and would accept, instead of a successful recitation, the discovery of a misprint on its pages. The boys generally sadly neglected his department, which was made elective, I think, after the soph.o.m.ore year.

At the examinations, which were held by committees appointed by the Board of Overseers, he always gave to the pupil the same problem that had been given to him in the last preceding recitation. So the boys were prepared to make a decent appearance.

He used to dress in a very peculiar fas.h.i.+on, wearing a queer little sack and striped trousers which made him look sometimes as if he were a salesman in a Jew clothing-store. He had a remarkably clear and piercing black eye. One night one of the students got into the belfry and attached a slender thread to the tongue of the bell, contrived to lock the door which led to the tower and carry off the key, then went to his room in the fourth story of Ma.s.sachusetts Hall and began to toll the bell. The students and the Faculty and proctors gathered, but n.o.body could explain the mysterious ringing of the bell until Peirce came upon the scene. His sharp eye perceived the slender line and it was traced to the room where the roguish fellow who was doing the mischief thought himself secure. He was detected and punished.

Peirce gained great fame in the scientific world by his controversy with Leverrier. Leverrier, as is well known, discovered some perturbations in the movement of the planet Herschel, now more commonly called Ura.n.u.s, which were not accounted for by known conditions. From that he reasoned that there must be another planet in the neighborhood and, on turning his gla.s.s to the point where his calculations told him the disturbing body must be, he discovered the planet sometimes called by his name and sometimes called Neptune. This discovery created a great sensation and a burst of admiration for the fortunate discoverer. Peirce maintained the astounding proposition that there was an error in Leverrier's calculations, and that the discovery was a fortunate accident. I believe that astronomers finally came to his conclusion. I remember once going into Boston in the omnibus when Peirce got in with a letter in his hand that he had just got from abroad and saying with great exultation to Professor Felton, who happened to be there, ”Gauss says I am right.”

I got well acquainted with Professor Peirce after I left College. He used to come to Was.h.i.+ngton after I came into public life. I found him one of the most delightful of men.

His treatise ”Ideality in the Physical Sciences,” and one or two treatises of a religious character which he published, are full of a lofty and glowing eloquence. He gave a few lectures in mathematics to the cla.s.s which, I believe, were totally incomprehensible to every one of his listeners with the possible exception of Child. He would take the chalk in his hand and begin in his shrill voice, ”If we take,” then he would write an equation in algebraic characters, ”thus we have,” following it by another equation or formula. By the time he had got his blackboard half covered, he would get into an enthusiasm of delight. He would rub the legs of his pantaloons with his chalky hands and proceed on his lofty pathway, apparently unconscious of his auditors. What has become of all those wonderful results of genius I do not know. He was invited to a banquet by the Harvard Alumni in New York where he was the guest of honor. Mr. Choate expressed a grave doubt whether the professor could dine comfortably without a blackboard.

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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 n.o.body 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.smates, 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 Sat.u.r.day, this informer, dressed up in his best, was starting for Boston, when he was seized by six of his cla.s.smates 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 cla.s.s 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 ent.i.tled ”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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s. 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.”