USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1913 > Part 16
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traders who knew the passes over the moun- tains; and on the 4th of July they drank the nation's health from the water of the Snake River, which flows to the Columbia and the Pacific. On the river they established Fort Hall, which passed later into the hands of the Hudson Bay Company and became an important station for the emigrant trains that later made their way to Oregon and California. Wyeth's enterprise was short- lived, and he and his brothers came back to
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take up their old life in Cambridge. They could not accomplish anything in the face of the well-established monopoly of the Hudson Bay Company throughout the Northwest; but the expedition not only revealed the survival of the pioneer quality of an old Cambridge stock, but as a genuine American attempt at coloniza- tion and settlement in the Northwest it played its part in the negotiations and treaties which finally made the great region, which is now Oregon and Washington, a part of the United States.
But the distinctive atmosphere of the Cam- bridge of the first half of the nineteenth century was that made by the presence of the College. The academic habit of thought and life, which characterized so many of the leading citizens, made Cambridge differ from other or neighboring towns. It was not only the natural place for Lowell and Holmes and Margaret Fuller to be born in, and for Longfellow and Allston to make their homes in, but the everyday life of the College people, the ways of thinking and talking, their interests and their characteristic union of simplicity and refine- ment, limited means and scholarly pursuits, plain living and high thinking, gave a unique charm to "On Sundays," wrote President Kırkland. Dr. Peabody, "Dr. the old village. Kirkland and Quincy ruled the College world. The Kirkland generally preached once,- in the after- duties of the President had changed since the days of the earlier leaders, when their task was described with sufficient accuracy as "thankless labor, unrequited service, arrearages unpaid, posthumous applause, a doggerel dirge and a Latin epitaph." President Kirkland was, according to Longfellow, "a jolly little man." He came to the presidency from the pulpit of the New South Church in Boston, and brought with him the reputation of a man of broad culture, of social charm, and of remarkable gifts as a preacher. He had, too, a kindly wit which enlivened his practical wisdom. When someone called on him for advice about a church noon, if I remember aright; and his sermons were listened to with interest and admiration, and that rather for the structure, meaning, and point of each successive sentence, than for any continuous course of thought or reasoning. He preached almost always on the ethics of daily life; and his sermons were made up for the most part of epigrammatic, proverb-like utterances, gems of the purest lustre, alike in diction and in significance, but, if not unstrung, strung on so fine a thread that only he could see it. In- deed, we had a strong suspicion that his sermons were put together on the spot. He used to carry into the pulpit a pile of loose leaves, from
quarrel over the dogma of "the perseverance of the saints," he replied: "Here in Boston we have no difficulty on that score; what troubles us here is the perseverance of the sinners." Lowell gives a pleasant account of him: "This life was good enough for him, and the next not too good. The gentlemanlike pervaded even his prayers. His were not the manners of a man of the world, nor of a man of the other world either; but both met in him to balance each other in a beautiful equilibrium. Praying, he leaned forward upon the pulpit-cushion, as for conversation, and seemed to feel himself (without irreverence) on terms of friendly, but courteous familiarity with heaven." He knew well how to deal with undergraduates. "Hear- ing that Porter's flip (which was exemplary) had too great an attraction for the collegians, he re- solved to investigate the matter himself. Accord- ingly, entering the old inn one day, he called for a mug of it, and having drunk it, said, 'And so, Mr. Porter, the young gentlemen come to drink your flip, do they?' 'Yes, sir,-some- times.' 'Ah, well, I should think they would. Good day, Mr. Porter,' and de- parted saying nothing more."
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which he was visibly employed in making a selection during the singing of the hymns. I doubt whether he often, if ever, wrote a whole sermon after he came to Cambridge. The law that underlies the arithmetical rule of 'permuta- tion and combination,' gave him, in a limited number of detached leaves, an unlimited number of potential sermons. His voice was pleasant and musical; his manner in the pulpit, grave and dignified; but it was commonly quite evi- dent that he felt less interest in his preaching than his hearers did."
When a stroke of paralysis obliged Dr. Kirk- land to retire while still in the prime of life, it was desirable that his successor should be a man of administrative experience and acquainted with the management of financial interests. Josiah Quincy was a man of distinguished lineage, and of unquestioned courage and ability. He had been a prominent member of the Massachusetts Legislature, a judge of the Municipal Court, a member of Congress and mayor of Boston, and -became, as one of his successors, Dr. Walker, said of him, "the great organizer of the University." During his administration the fast-growing library was housed in Gore Hall; Dane Hall was built for the Law School; the Astronomical Observatory was established, first in the Dana House at the corner of Quincy and Harvard Streets, and later on the Concord Avenue hill, where it now stands. He reformed the state of the College Commons, cleansed the Commencement season of rowdy- ism, systematized the courses of study, and filled the life of the expanding University with his characteristic vigor. In his intercourse with people, Mr. Quincy lacked the consummate tact that had distinguished Dr. Kirkland. He could not remember names, and when a student - someone sent for but a few minutes before, came into his office, it was to be met with the abrupt question, "What's your name?" So much was this his habit that if, as occasionally happened, he did recognize a face, he would prob- ably say, "Well, Brown, what's your name?" Rev. Artemas B. Muzzey, the longtime minister of the Cambridgeport Parish, recalled in his Reminiscences how "an extraordinary energy pervaded the whole character and life of Mr. Quincy; whatever his hand found to do he did with his might. This trait was seen in his
emphatic mode of conversation. I often no- ticed a reaction of this intensity. He would express himself with great clearness and force, and, notwithstanding he was a thorough gentleman and full of courtesy, he would in a few moments-even while one perhaps was responding to his words-from the power of his temperament, be sometimes lost in ob- livion, and, seeming unable to resist the tendency, even close his eyes as if overtaken by sleep.
"To this peculiar temperament, I think, was owing in part his occasional lapse of memory. He often forgot the names of those he knew perfectly well, even of college students, whom he wished specially to address aright. The story was told, probably without a sure founda- tion, that he went one day to the Cambridge post-office for his mail, and, upon his asking if there were any letters for him, the clerk, being that day a newcomer in the office, asked, 'For what name, sir?' 'For what name,' Mr. Quincy replied, 'you know me of course.' In his ab- sence of mind, as the story went, he for the moment actually forgot his own name. Turning away he was met by a friend who thus accosted him: 'Good-morning, Mr. Quincy.' 'Ah, Quincy,' said he, returning to the clerk, 'are there any letters for Mr. Quincy?' I think those who had known and enjoyed the benefit of the remarkable memory for names of his predecessor, Dr. Kirkland, liked to repeat, and would sometimes exaggerate, anecdotes of this kind.
"The industry of this rare man was as remark- able as his intellect and eminent virtues. I remember in a conversation upon the dangers and evils of the prevalent excessive reading of newspapers, he once said: 'For myself, I devote but ten minutes a day to the papers.' Perhaps this will appear to many a meagre allotment of time for such reading. But it reveals that marvellous economy of time which enabled him not only to read so many solid books, but to write volume upon volume himself, in addition to his practical labors, as a lawyer and as a business man, the discharge of his manifold offices as representative in the State and National Legislatures, on the bench as mayor, for six years of a rapidly-growing city, for six- teen years as president of Harvard College,
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besides working elsewhere in the cause of edu- cation, and in many other distinguished and useful occupations."
Mr. Quincy lived to be the oldest graduate of the College, and sat for his photograph with his four successors in office, Everett, Sparks, Walker and Felton. He retained to his ninety- second year his keen interest in all College affairs, and wrote its history, a book which found its origin in the oration which Mr. Quincy delivered in 1836, on the occasion of the two
of the Law School. The Dane Professorship of Law was founded with the condition that the first occupant of the chair should be Judge Story, then at the height of his fame as a justice of the Supreme Court. It was not altogether an inviting opportunity, for the Law School had no building, a very small library, and during the year before his appointment, not a single student. The fame of the great judge soon changed that discouraging situation, and so interesting were the lectures that the students
PRESIDENTS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
JOSIAH QUINCY, 1829-1845
EDWARD EVERETT 1846-1849
JARED SPARKS 1849-1853
JAMES WALKER 1853-1860
CORNELIUS C. FELTON 1860-1862
hundredth anniversary of the founding of the College.
Of the College professors who gave to Cam- bridge its distinctive atmosphere, there were many who bore names famous outside of the academic world. George Ticknor, Henry Wads- worth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell served successively as Professors of Belles- Lettres; Norton, Palfrey, Willard, Noyes and Francis were upbuilding the Divinity School, and Joseph Story was laying the foundations
were willing to give up their holidays for the sake of attending. Richard H. Dana, just back from his famous "Two Years Before the Mast," was one of the students. He wrote: "At the close of a term there was one more case than there was an afternoon to hear it in, unless we took Saturday. Judge Story said: 'Gentle- men, the only time we can hear this case is Saturday afternoon. No one is obliged or expected to attend. I am to hold Court in Boston until two o'clock. I will ride directly
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out, take a hasty dinner, and be here by half- past three o'clock, and hear the case, if you are willing.' He looked round the school for a reply. We felt ashamed, in our own business, where we were alone interested, to be outdone in zeal and labor by this aged and distinguished man, to whom the case was but child's play, a tale twice told, and who was himself pressed down by almost incredible labours. The pro- posal was unanimously accepted. The judge was on the spot at the hour, the school was never more full, and he sat until late in the evening, hardly a man leaving the room."
Among the law students in 1838 was Lowell. "I am reading Blackstone," he wrote, "with as good a grace and as few wry faces as I may." Eight months later he could write more cheer- fully. "I begin to like the law. And therefore it is quite interesting. I am determined that I will like it, and therefore I do." On Story's death, in 1845, the school numbered one hundred and sixty-five students, who had flocked to his teaching, not only from New England, but from almost every State in the Union.
During the sixteen years in which he filled the chair Judge Story wrote all of his legal text- books and his treatises, filling no less than thir- teen volumes. He lived in the house on Brattle Street which is still standing near to the corner of the street which bears his name. "With fully two men's stated work," wrote Dr. Peabody, "he had time for every good cause and worthy enterprise. There was no public meeting for a needed charity, for educational interests, in behalf of art or letters, or for the advancement of a conservatively liberal theology, in which his advocacy was not an essential part of the programme. When there were no other speakers of note, it was enough to hear him; and he was not unwilling to occupy, and never failed to fill to the delight of his hearers, all the time that could be given him. When there were others whom it was desirable to hear, he was generally made chairman; and in his opening speech he always contrived to say as much as all those who followed him, and often unconsciously took the wind out of their sails. He formed a large part of the life of Cambridge society. His son is the only other man that I have ever known who could talk almost continuously for several successive hours, and leave his hearers with an
appetite for more. Wherever Judge Story was, he did not usurp the conversation, but the floor was spontaneously and gladly conceded to him; and his listeners were entertained with an unin- termitted flow of wit, humor, anecdote, literary criticism, comments on passing events, talk on the highest themes of thought,-the transition from topic to topic never abrupt, but always natural and graceful .... Judge Story was a good citizen of Cambridge, and took an active part in all important municipal affairs. No man did more than he in securing for Cambridge the right to enclose the Common, in opposition to the towns lying farther in the interior, which claimed as of immemorial prescription the un- restricted and unbounded right of way for the herds of cattle that were driven through Cam- bridge to Brighton. In fine, one can hardly have filled a larger place in the community of his residence than he filled, with prompt and faithful service, with overflowing kindness and good will, and with the grateful recognition of people of every class and condition."
The theologians played a large part in the social and intellectual life of Cambridge. Pro- fessor Andrews Norton lived in Cambridge for forty-three years, and made his beautiful house at Shady Hill a place of pilgrimage for two gen- erations of students. For twenty years he served as tutor, librarian and lecturer; and then for twenty-three he gave himself to his inde- pendent work as a Biblical scholar. His suc- cessor in the Professorship of Sacred Literature was John Gorham Palfrey, who was not only famous for the thoroughness of his scholarship and the charm of his teaching, but also for his labors as editor of the North American Review, and for his anti-slavery words and works. After his withdrawal from teaching he continued to live on the ample estate which he had made at the end of Divinity Avenue, and added to his fame by writing his "History of New England," and by serving as a member of Congress and as the Postmaster of Boston.
Sidney Willard was another theological pro- fessor who was also a useful citizen. He held the Hancock professorship of Hebrew, and was editor of the American Monthly Review and later of the Christian Register. Like Dr. Palfrey, after withdrawing from teaching, he gave his time and ability to the public service. He was
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for several terms in the Legislature, then a him in full chase after an offender, or dancing member of the Governor's Council, and for round a bonfire; while it was well understood that as a detective, he was almost always at fault. three years Mayor of Cambridge after the organi- zation of the city.
Among the professors of the College proper under the administration of Presidents Kirkland and Quincy there were many others who gave unique quality to Cambridge life. There was Edward Everett, who left the pulpit to become the first incumbent of the Eliot Professorship of Greek, and who was afterwards for four years president of the University; and there was John Quincy Adams, who was the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. These are great names in American history, but the bearers of these names walked our Cambridge streets and stopped for their letters at the Post-office along with the humblest of their fellow-citizens. Their successors were men of lesser fame, but their personalities gave flavor to the town. Professor John S. Popkin was the best Greek scholar of his generation. He was a man of majestic presence, but of very odd appearance and manner. Lowell describes his " great silver spectacles of the heroic period, such as scarce twelve noses of these degenerate days could bear;" and Dr. Peabody said: "Shyness and solitude gave him an aspect and manners more eccentric than can easily be imagined in these days, when, under the assimi- lating influence of modern habits, idiosyncrasies have faded out, and every man means and aims to look like every other. His dress, indeed, was, in an historical sense, that of a gentleman; but his tailor must have been the last survivor of an else long extinct race. He never walked. His gait was always what is termed a dog-trot, slightly accelerated as he approached its termi- nus. He jerked out his words as if they were forced from him by a nervous spasm, and closed every utterance with a sound that seemed like a muscular movement of suction. In his recita- tion-room he sat by a table rather than behind it, and grasped his right leg, generally with both hands, lifting it as if he were making attempts to shoulder it, and more nearly accomplishing that feat daily than an ordinary gymnast would after a year's special training. As chairman of the parietal government, he regarded it as his official duty to preserve order in the College Yard: but he was the frequent cause of disorder; for nothing so amused the students as to see
"Oddities were then not rare, and excited less surprise and animadversion than they would now. The students held him in reverence, and at the same time liked him. His were the only windows of parietal officers that were never broken. Personal insult or outrage to him would have been resented by those who took the greatest delight in indirect methods of annoying him. Once, indeed, when he was groping on the floor in quest of smothered fire, in a room that had been shattered by an ex- plosion of gunpowder, a bucket of water was thrown on him by a youth, whose summary expulsion was the only case of the kind that I then knew in which the judgment of the students was in entire harmony with that of the Faculty. As may be supposed, he was not without a nickname, which he accepted as a matter of course from the students; but hearing it on one occasion from a young man of dapper, jaunty, unacademic aspect, he said to a friend who was standing with him, 'What right has that man to call me "Old Pop"? He was never a member of Harvard College.'
"Dr. Popkin's only luxury was the very mod- erate use of tobacco. Every noon and every evening, Sundays excepted, he trotted to an apothecary's shop, laid down two cents, then the price for what would now cost five times as much, and carried to his room a single Spanish cigar. Of course, though the shop was open, he would not go to it on Sunday; and he would not duplicate his Saturday's purchase, lest he might be tempted to duplicate his Saturday evening's indulgence. A friend who often visited him on Sunday evening always took with him two cigars, one of which the doctor gratefully ac- cepted."
Dr. Popkin retired in 1833, but lived, chiefly occupied in reading the Greek Testament and the Greek poets, until 1852. During his teach- ing days he had lived at first in a College room and later in the old Wigglesworth house next to the President's house. He afterwards built a house on Massachusetts Avenue (then North Avenue) next to the house of his classmate and lifelong Associate, Professor Levi Hedge. The
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old gentlemen held pleasant intercourse daily over the fence, but it is said that neither. ever entered the other's house. Dr. Hedge was for many years the professor of logic and meta- physics. He had written the text-book which was used in his classes. He did not attempt to teach, but expected his students to memorize the book. According to common report he was in the habit of saying: "It took me fourteen years, with the assistance of the adult members of my family, to write this book, and I am sure that you cannot do better than to employ the precise words of the learned author." He is best remembered, by a later generation, as the father of Dr. Frederic Henry Hedge, the great preacher, theologian and German scholar.
The successors of John Quincy Adams in the Boylston professorship were both noteworthy men, Joseph McKean (1809- 1818) and Edward T. Channing (1819- 1851). Channing it was who formed the English style of a generation of American writers and speakers who belonged to what is sometimes called the golden age of American literature.
DIVINITY HALL
Three learned and beloved professors of this period became successively presidents of the University. Jared Sparks was the professor of history from 1838 to 1849, and president from 1849 to 1853. His voluminous and painstaking work as author and editor sustained the literary pre-eminence of the College. James Walker, one of the most influential preachers of his gen- eration, became professor of philosophy in 1838, and was president from 1853 to 1860. After his retirement his home on Sparks Street was the resort of innumerable leaders of the younger generation who sought the guidance of his far- seeing wisdom and rich experience. Cornelius C. Felton began to teach Greek at Cambridge in 1832, succeeded Dr. Popkin in the Eliot pro-
fessorship two years later, and in 1860 succeeded Dr. Walker as president.
The great name of Benjamin Pierce appeared in fifty-four of the annual catalogues of the University, and he died at the beginning of his fiftieth year of continuous service as tutor and professor. His fame as a mathematician early became worldwide, and added not a little to the renown of Cambridge. Asa Gray came to Cambridge in 1842, and for forty-six years his name and fame made Cambridge illustrious in the eyes of all who loved plants and flowers, or who sought to find the secrets of nature. He established the Botanic Garden on Garden Street, and was the foremost of American bot- anists. The Observatory was established in President Quincy's administration, and under the guidance of William Cranch Bond soon became the most renowned place of astronomi- cal research in America.
Finally, among the scholars who gave to Cambridge its unique distinc- tion, were a number of distinguished gentlemen of foreign birth, who came to the town because of its literary associations, or were connected with the Uni- versity life. Francis Sales, a high-bred French gentleman, was the tutor in French and Spanish from 1816 to 1854, and was worthily held in high regard in the society of his adopted town, introducing into what may well have been a somewhat prim and formal intercourse, a per- petually youthful vivacity, and the manners and dress of a Frenchman of the Old Régime. Lowell wrote of him: "Perpetual childhood dwelt in him, the childhood of his native South- ern France, and its fixed air was all the time bubbling up and sparkling and winking in his eyes. It seemed as if his placid old face were only a mask behind which a merry Cupid had ambushed himself, peeping out all the while,
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and ready to drop it when the play grew tire- some. Every word he uttered seemed to be hilarious, no matter what the occasion. If he were sick, and you visited him, if he had met with a misfortune (and there are few men so wise that they can look even at the back of a retiring sorrow with composure), it was all one; his great laugh went off as if it were set like an alarm clock, to run down, whether he would or no, at a certain nick. Even after an ordinary Good morning! (especially if to an old pupil, and in French), the wonderful Haw, haw, haw! by Shorge! would burst upon you unexpectedly,
would it have occurred to him to turn it into view, and insist that his friends should look at it with him. Nor was this a mere outside good- humor; its source was deeper, in a true Christian kindliness and amenity."
Charles Follen was the first teacher of German at Harvard, and a man of remarkable gifts. He had been a student and professor at the University of Giessen; and when driven from Germany because of his participation in certain patriotic and insurrectionary demonstrations, found refuge in Switzerland. Encouraged by Lafayette and by Professor Ticknor he came to
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