The College In The Sixties
[Dr. Spalding's Autobiography of hisyears at Dartmouth (1862-66) continuedfrom last month.—ED.]
EDITED BY DR. WILLIAM LELAND HOLT
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL sight in our Freshman year was of dear Professor Putnam construing Greek; to listen to the sound of his attractive voice, to look at his fascinating features and bluish-black hair as it shone in the rays of the setting sun. Most of us were not ashamed to cry when Putnam was brought home dead from his voyage to Europe in search of health and was solemnly buried, the college boys following, to his last resting place.
We studied Liddell's "History of Ancient Rome," and I wrote an essay on "Public Trials in Ancient Rome," which was well received. After that, we took up the "Disputations of Cicero" and the "Poetical Art of Horace," and of all the "ridiculosities" for boys of our ages, we were hustled into the ingenious "enigmatical creations of Isocrates. How could the faculty expect us to know anything about Grecian politics or to compose essays on topics in a language so difficult?
In French we translated the plays of Racine, and in German I took the greatest fancy to Lessing's "Emilia Galotti." To this very day, I am often reading the original copy that I had at Dartmouth, and also for memory of my Sallie, with whom I read this and many plays, histories and novels in German, French and Italian. That was indeed a curious courtship of nine delightful years, and "Emilia Galotti" became a firm friend and heroine of ours as she had been mine alone in Dartmouth.
It was the custom every winter for students at Dartmouth to take a vacation of two months in order to earn money by teaching. I did not care to teach so I returned to college at the end of '62 for the winter semester, and came in contact with Chapman's "Handbook of Drawing," an instructive treatise in free hand drawing which enabled me afterward to be of service in drawing sketches of the eye, and ear, when studying medicine. There was also another book, Max Mueller's "Science of Language" which interested me because it showed how we learn languages better, as we know the derivation of the words. When you know for life that "through" comes from "thorough," by omitting the first "O," you will know forever, that when you have got "through" with a job, you have done it "thoroughly"; and after that, you will never dare to spell "through" in the abominable fashion of today, with which I will not defile this page to irritate your eyes or your brains.
During this term, I made the acquaintance of Charles Milliken, who was from Maine, a devoted friend in college and, later on, a physician who gave me many a consultation and many a handsome fee in Cherryfield where he spent the rest of his life. A second Maine man was Harrison Hume, a famous political orator from Passamaquoddy Bay. He was boisterous, but generous and kind hearted to me to the end of his life. A third man from Maine was Bartlett Campbell, who was delightful himself and had an even more delightful sister.
As I have said, I was fond of French and German at school, so that when I went to Dartmouth, I was ahead of most of the boys. Now when it happened that we went into these languages, the professor put me into the second division of the class in both languages. When I found it out, I stood in my seat and said in German, "Sir, I am not so lazy in German and French as you seem to think I am in everything." The result of this was that he put me into the first division of both languages, and it was not long before I had high ranking in both. In point of fact, the faculty at Dartmouth never seemed to me to be able to gauge students, except by their parrot-like ability to repeat sentences in Latin and Greek, problems in Algebra and Geometry, and pages of Rhetoric and Logic. One trouble was that personally, they were teachers, and did not know how to speak the languages which they taught. I never had a question put to me in Latin, Greek, French, German, Spanish or Irish at Dartmouth.
We had a good time in the winter terms at Dartmouth and a favorite epigram of mine was this:
"There is nothing in college to damp us,Not even six feet of snow on the campus."
One thing pleased us after our first winter term, and that was, that we were allowed by the Sophomores to wear a silk hat to church.
After two years, we were bound for the Junior Class, but I do not seem to have had the faintest idea of where I was bound. I just lived on from day to day. I played billiards a little, struggled with my lessons as well as I could, but none of them seemed to interest me. I lived by myself, used to take exercise by running on a track an eighth of a mile long and by rowing on the Connecticut River in a shell. I liked languages and enjoyed surveying out of doors, but all the rest of the studies were "a scream."
Let me say something here about the professors. Woodman, the teacher of Mathematics, recognized my ability and made me captain of a surveying section of the class; and I led them into many a field to determine its size and to the bottom of many a hill to measure its height. This was good practice and a few drawings which still remain in my portfolio prove that I could do something at Dartmouth, if only I were not compelled into mental dumbness by Rhetoric and Logic. Woodman and his wife were kind to me, but they left before I was graduated. A little courtesy and kindness from the faculty or their wives would save many a thoughtless boy from floundering around in a morass of overpowering books.
Varney was tall and fidgety, keen on solving problems in Algebra and with no mercy to a student who was slow. He was not a good teacher because he saw everything in advance, and lacked the patience which was needed for students to catch up with him.
Hubbard was a genial instructor; all that you had to do was to get into his good graces in Geology; later on, ask for half a day off for "a field day into the country" and bring him back interesting specimens. It was on one of these occasions that Pillsbury and I brought him some handsome aquamarines and fairy crosses from Grafton, and pure gold which we found in Vermont. What fools we were not to know enough to "stake it out" or "claim it" and try to make our fortunes, seventy years ago!
Professor Noyes was great on "Objectivities" and loved to have the boys talk back to him from their seats in the recitation rooms. Amongst these boys, Jimmie Powell and Edgar Johnson were fond of putting curious questions to him. We loved to hear these "argufications" going on, because it increased our chances of not being called on to recite on topics of which most of us knew nothing, even when we used the exact words which were printed in the book.
Aikin was tall, short-sighted, but a good Latinist. He read it well from the books. He had the grammar and the parsing and the scanning down fine, but he couldn't answer anyone asking "Quomodo tibi?"
Professor Patterson loved his Astronomy and if you could only sneak into the Observatory and try for some pictures of the variable stars or occultations of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn, and tell him about it in boyish fashion, he would be delighted and give you a good mark. Later on, in college, I tried to induce him to give me an appointment to West Point; but he always fought shy about it, apparently preferring to give it to some boy who was not a student at Dartmouth.
President Lord lived amidst a great deal of trouble from his belief in the divine origin of slavery. He once preached a sermon on "How should we be Just, with God" which filled seventy-five printed pages. He was fond of following up the little "scraps" on the part of students and woe betide the fellow who went before him and told him the least bit of a fib for, like Sherlock Holmes, he Could read you through and through in a second and put his finger on where you were trying to cheat him. We felt sick at heart when we knew that President Lord had spotted us.
Lyman came to Hanover at the end of our Sophomore year and gave me the treat of my life in the shape of a vacation to Niagara Falls. We saw Rochester, where Sam Patch became famous by jumping over the Falls, and at Niagara we found Uncle James and had the time of our lives. In those days the primitive beauty of the Falls was still there. After admiring the beauties of Nature at Niagara, we went on to New York, where we stopped at the famous Astor House. We visited the celebrated Museum of Barnum, and stood in open mouthed wonder before the "water works," saw the mermaid and mummies and everything that Barnum had to show. The "Life of Barnum" had already amazed and amused us boys, and now to be in his museum and see him in person was a boyhood dream fulfilled.
After a few days in New York, we boarded die "Mary Powell," the fastest steamer on the Hudson, and went up the river to West Point, where we made a remarkable visit on Dahlgren, who had been in Lyman's class at the Naval Academy, but had been exchanged to West Point as more congenial to his artillery fame. We also visited a fellow named Clark, to whom both of us took the greatest fancy but never saw again.
After West Point we went to Cold Spring, where we met cousins, the Peter Parrotts, and then made our way up Lake Champlain and across country to Boston and so home. We had a great time, spent our money nobly, but still got home with a little left.
While at Niagara Falls, Uncle James, who had known Gen. Joe Hooker at Fort Constitution in Portsmouth, introduced use to the General, and we were as much pleased to meet a war hero as to hear about old Portsmouth.
After a vacation at Portsmouth in 1864 I went back to Hanover, hoping to make good for the Junior year, but it was not to be; for I went to board at the Powers House with the active minded fellows of our class, and the air of Hanover was full of pillaging, robbing and "gobbling," as the air of the whole country was impregnated with Sherman's march through Georgia. Everything was on the "gobble." We stole whatever we happened to see, but we didn't think it was stealing; it was just "a-marching through Georgia." In this way we discovered some bee-hives and proceeded to "gobble" the honey. As I did not know how to do it, I stood on the outer edge of the gang, while they smoked out the bees and handed us the combs, which we took back to Powers House. There we ate it with crackers to our hearts' content. The faculty being informed of the theft, search was made throughout the town. Twice they came to us but found nothing, the remaining combs of honey being hidden inside stoves or outside in the barn. As ill luck would have it, one of the faculty came the third time, and as he was leaving without finding anything, he happened to look up to a skylight in the roof and there saw buzzing bees! We were caught, and "K.O.'d." While waiting our punishment, other thefts were discovered. Nobody would confess or accuse another boy, so the faculty decided that the whole class of 1866 should be "decimated," or one boy of every ten expelled. As luck would have it, our class leader was one of the four expelled and I was another. He left for Harvard and never returned. Another went to Bowdoin, and I went to Claremont to study with the Rev. Mr. Peck, and had a very agreeable winter with the charming young ladies of his church. Being a college boy of the society age, I went everywhere and had great times singing with the girls and playing pianoforte duets, trimming the church at Christmas, playing billiards and reciting daily Demosthenes on "The Crown," rhetoric, logic and metaphysics. I walked occasionally with Mr. and Mrs. Peck, but oftener with Miss Nellie Adams and the charming Lucy Putnam of Cornish.
Altogether 1 had a great time at Claremont and left there with much regret, although I wanted also to be back in Hanover, because Otis and Sherman were steadily writing me letters urging me to make up with President Smith and come back as soon as I could, for they wanted me. In the middle of March I went to Portsmouth, having filled all my conditions; but meeting President Smith, I found him still hard hearted, and he refused to let me return till the first of May. So on the first of May I went back to Dartmouth, and worked with a vim which really astonished all; and I kept it up until I graduated in the following year. In spite of all my efforts, the professors continued to mark me down. This I cannot understand, for I was in earnest and wanted to do something to show mother and father that I was not lazy, but I think that the professors must have made up their minds that I was no good. Last of all, however, I think that perhaps even then, I was getting a little deaf without knowing it and that my asserted inattention came from not hearing all that was said.
(To be continued in a later issue)
