A HAPPY FAMILY.

31 prayers, which were like the Jewish tamid, a continual daily offering.

I heard my father say that he would rather give up his breakfast than family prayers. We used to read in turn a verse from the chapter at prayers; even the younger ones, who could not read well, would have their turn. This made us very familiar with the Bible. There was always the blessing and return of thanks at each meal, a pious custom often now disused, I fear.

We were taught to see the hand of God in everything and to realize His constant presence. How it was done I cannot tell, for neither father nor mother talked to us much about these things. It must have been the force of example and the religious atmosphere that filled the house, unconsciously affecting us, as does the earthly atmosphere.

I think of my father with all his cares and duties as always most cheerful, and of my mother as never too tired to entertain us by repeating poetry or telling stories, and both making our home always bright and happy.

I might mention here what a great change has taken place in drinking customs since I was a boy. Then it was thought uncivil not to offer any visitor, much more the minister, Jamaica rum, or whiskey, when he called, and it was thought impossible for him to refuse it. A decanter of wine or spirits stood on every sideboard. When as a boy I went around with my father, who never drank much, and afterwards became a total abstainer, I used to have the "heel-taps," as they were called. Deacons and elders sold liquor as regularly as groceries.

A minister once was noticed to be very thick in his speech and much under the influence of liquor, and the congregation appointed the deacons to investigate the matter. In excuse he said he had been in the habit of getting his liquor from Deacon but he had lately, through a friend, got some of the genuine stuff from Boston, and though he had taken only the usual quantity, it affected him as they saw. Deacon moved to drop the in

quiry, fearing, doubtless, that his watered rum might suffer. Cider-drinking was very common, and it made men stupid and quarrelsome. Cider-drunkards showed it in the face. I have never seen any since. Dr. Leonard Woods, Professor at Andover Seminary, said he had known forty ministers to die drunkards. The temptations then to drinking were much greater than now, for the minister in this country and England would take a glass

32

NEW ENGLAND RUM.

of port or something of the sort, before and after preaching. We may thank God that this evil is lessening. In 1812 a gill of rum, whiskey or brandy was made part of the regular daily ration of each soldier.

Improvements have been made in ethical, not to say Christian, living during the century:

"Dr. Chambers, of Philadelphia, tells us that in 1825 he went to a funeral of a prominent member of his church, and that he and the sexton were the only persons who were not in danger of falling into the grave through drunkenness. On the next Sunday he told his people that he would never again officiate at a funeral of a church member where liquor was freely distributed. As late as 1835 a deacon in a prominent church in Boston was at once a distiller of whiskey and at the same time an agent for the Bible Society."

Coal was never dreamed of as fuel, but might sometimes be found upon the mantel-piece as a curiosity. In this year, 1902, when coal is so necessary it is strange to know that the year I was born, nine wagons loaded with anthracite coal were hauled 106 miles to Philadelphia; two loads were sold at cost of transportation, and seven given away, and the sale was denounced as a fraud.

Anthracite coal was first used in Boston about 1824 and gas about the same time, though not used in houses until I came to Virginia, about 1836.

TH

CHAPTER V.

COLLEGE DAYS.

HE old are generally praisers of the past and its ways. It is well for them to show the reasons for their belief and give some account of their experiences. I do not claim that my college life and advantages were equal in some respects to the present. Yet I think we had to study then as hard as now, with fewer distractions, and the discipline of the mind and faculties was thorough. We did not have such scientific grammars or such full lexicons, or such a bewildering array of sciences; but with our Græca Minora and Majora, and the Delphin editions of Greek and Latin Classics, with notes in Latin, and Schrevelius' Greek Lexicon with Latin definitions, we soon gained a mastery of the languages, and read the higher works with more fullness perhaps than now, where a closer attention is paid to the details of language, its grammar, construction, and metre. Pickering's Greek Lexicon with English definitions was the first one ever introduced into this country, and was hailed with delight. We gained also a love of the classics which stayed with us, and this led to our keeping up these studies in a measure all our lives. Now, what with the cramming and pressure to pass severe examinations, there has come a desire to pass and then never to take up the study again, or in the press of life and its many engagements there is not the same leisure and opportunity to keep up one's college studies. Certainly, I do not see that those who now study Latin and Greek have any greater love for or acquaintance with the literature than we had in that earlier day. There is more scientific knowledge now, but the mind is not better trained, there is no sounder judgment, or clearer insight into difficult questions than under the old system. Students learned in grammatical construction often never dream of reading Latin or Greek for pleasure or self culture. Woodrow Wilson, Professor at Princeton University, believes in the old system of classical training, I am glad to hear.

A few words must be said about Bowdoin College. An attempt was made in 1787 to establish a college in the District of Maine,

and the 24th of June, 1794, the charter was signed and the college was called Bowdoin in honor of Governor Bowdoin, the friend of Washington and a patriot. His son James Bowdoin perpetuated his father's memory by most liberal gifts to the college of lands and money, a rare collection of minerals and metals, a large and and valuable library, and a gallery of paintings accumulated in France. The charter established a college for the purpose of educating youth and promoting virtue and piety and the knowledge of the languages and of the useful and liberal arts and sciences. "Those were the days," says Chief Justice Fuller in his Centennial Address at Bowdoin June, 1894-" we trust in every fundamental sense they are still with us-when all alike regarded virtue and piety as essential elements of education, and religion as the chief corner-stone of an educational institution. It was impossible that any other view could be entertained. Religion of some kind has been the basis of education, of whatever kind and at whatever time; and as the things of truth, of honesty, of justice, of purity, of loveliness and of good report were the acknowledged ends of education, these were to be attained only through the spiritual forces of the Christian religion, by which human culture had been preserved and through which it was to reach its highest development. The charter did but adopt the language of the Constitution of the State, which declared that knowledge, wisdom and virtue were necessary for the preservation of the people's rights and liberties." These wise and weighty words of our Chief-Justice deserve to be remembered by all interested in education.

Another graduate equally distinguished in another calling, Nathaniel Hawthorne, has said in his earlier novel, "If this institution did not offer all the advantages of older and prouder seminaries, its deficiencies were compensated to its students by the inculcation of regular habits, and of a deep and awful sense of religion, which seldom deserted them in their course through life." This influence doubtless affected him in writing his masterly stories, which treat of the profound problems of life, with its sin and crime, the mystery of pain, the reason and value of existence, the law of repentance, and the cure for the sinning soul. This active moral and religious influence is a peculiarity of the American system.

At one of the German universities a Professor of Harvard gave one of the Professors some account of the discipline of the

THE COLLEGE Course.

35

American colleges, especially its moral and religious tone, the stated morning and evening service of the chapel, and the watch over the morals and character of the students. The German uttered an exclamation of surprise and gratification: "Would God we had the same!"

Bowdoin College had then, as it has now, the regular college course of four years, with mathematical and classical studies, as fixed as the laws of the Medes and Persians, binding on every one; but it also opened up to the student every department, as the advancing standards of the time demanded. Its scheme of discipline and study aimed to fit the student for the pursuits of practical life and for the prosecution of advanced study in any department.

Dr. Daniel R. Goodwin, once a Professor there, in his address at Bowdoin in 1873, has wisely said: "The old function of the college proper will always be required. If our colleges were all at once transformed into German universities we should need and we should soon establish in their place our old colleges, or the German gymnasia, to perform what would thus be abandoned of their present office-a fundamental general training, the preparation of a generous, liberal classical culture, the proper discipline of humanity. This would be needed for the professions, too, especially for that of the clergy. And as regards science itself, it will always be found that no minds are so well prepared to grasp and preserve the properly scientific character and bearings of what is presented, even in the popular lecture, as those which have been disciplined by a thorough classical and mathematical training. There is no hostility between science and the classics. Let us propose no such miserable alternatives as learning or science, science or religion; rather let our watchwords and battle-cry be-learning and science, science and religion, 'now and forever, one and inseparable.'

It was the twenty-sixth institution of learning established in this country, and in its hundred years of existence has had many graduates who have taken the first place in every calling and position. Upon its roll stand the names of a President and nine Senators of the United States, a Speaker of the National House, a Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court, twenty-five members of Congress, many governors, foreign ministers, legislators, eminent divines, presidents and professors in colleges and seminaries, missionaries, editors, and noble and useful men in every department of life.