ALPHEUS S. PACKARD. 4I I had the salutatory oration of my class in the Junior year and it was delivered in Latin as the above quotation shows. The Professor of Latin and Greek was my brother, Alpheus S. Packard, who entered college in 1812, graduated with the Latin Salutatory, given to the second scholar in the class, in 1816, returned as tutor in 1819, and then was made Professor, and continued in his position there until his death, in July, 1884, when he was acting President of the College. Chief Justice Fuller, in his address before quoted, says: "Professor Packard is immortalized in the lines of one of his most celebrated pupils and associates." Longfellow, in the poem delivered at the semi-centennial of his class in 1875, entitled Morituri Salutamus, one of the most celebrated and elegant poems he ever wrote, turning and addressing him, thus spoke : "They are no longer here; they all are gone Into the land of shadows,-all save one. · Justice Fuller goes on to say: "As to Professor Packard an observation may well be added. In his address of 1858 he quotes Chief-Justice Jay as saying that the French Revolution 'banished silk stockings and good manners,' but he furnished in himself, throughout the sixty-five years of his devotion to the college and its work, indubitable proof that though knee-breeches had disappeared, the latter part of the opinion of the Chief-Justice must be limited in its application or be overruled. Professor Packard had elegant and courtly manners, and was very handsome." In 1829 Henry W. Longfellow became Professor of Modern Languages and Librarian, and he with Goodwin gave to Modern Languages a position they had nowhere else. He was very young and handsome, the ideal of a poet, and very affable to the students, who were more at ease with him than with any other Professor. I remember well my first sight of him, dressed in English costume, as he had just returned from Europe; with his clear, ruddy complexion, auburn hair and blue eyes, I thought him the most beautiful man I had ever seen. I was in the first class he taught. He taught me French and made me an Assistant Librarian. We studied Gil Blas, in the beginning of which Gil Blas says of his mother that when she married she was not in her first youth, in French, "Elle n'était pas dans la première jeu 42 LONGFELLOW'S FRENCH CLASS. nesse," which Longfellow rendered "She was no chicken." It was a pleasure to recite to him as the dullness of the lecture was enlivened by his remarks. He gave us exercises in French, and up to the time of the war I had mine with Tres bien often at the bottom in his own handwriting. He published Proverbs Dramatiques, which we studied. He illustrated the proverb "Good wine needs no bush" by telling us that in his travels in Spain a "bush" was the sign over wine-shops. Though unknown then to fame, he exerted an inspiring influence on the men. He was always most kindly and pleasant in his relations to me, and when, in my Junior year, I had a bad cough from inflammation of the lungs, he advised me to discontinue my studies and try to get well. This I did for several months, and in April, 1829, I went with a friend from Wiscasset to New York in a schooner, and we were out five nights. We went up the Hudson to Albany in a fine steamer about ten miles an hour. We spent a day and night at the Catskill Mountain House, some miles from the landing, and under the inspiration of the scene I wrote, when seventeen years old, a poem on "Catskill Falls." Phillips Brooks said in his address on Poetry at the Episcopal High School in 1859: "There are times when it is good for any man to perpetrate a page or two with the lines ending similarly. There is a great deal of poetry that is perfectly justifiable to write, but utterly inexcusable to show when it is written. Verses, like the papers in lost pocket-books, of no possible value except to the * * * There are times when the dullest souls among us fledge unguessed-of wings and turn to sudden poets. There are brooks whose singing is contagious and sunrises which turn all live men into Memnon statues." So I will not print my owner. verses. We hired a chaise and drove to Saratoga, which was a small place with few visitors. We stopped to water the horse in a stream, and, to our dismay, he began to sink in a quagmire, but got out at last safely. During a thunder-storm we stopped at a farm-house and were given some boiled cider, very strong and sweet. We returned the same way, very much improved in health. We spent a fortnight in New York city, where hogs were running in the streets. I paid five dollars a week board at a boarding-house on Pearl street, and I thought it very high. New York had then about 120,000 inhabitants. I heard Dr. Finney preach in Dr. Spring's Brick Church, and he impressed me very strongly. Fish were not allowed to be sold, unless alive, as is the case now in Norway. It was curious to see them floundering in the tubs of water. Water was sold from barrels. I returned to college much stronger in every way. I graduated in a class of twenty-one and was given the Latin Salutatory, the same position my brothers Alpheus and Charles had at their graduation. I might have taken a higher stand if I had been two years older and able to contend with more mature minds. Dr. Daniel R. Goodwin, the late distinguished Professor at the Philadelphia Divinity School, was three years in college with me, graduating in 1832, when two years older than myself. He was unquestionably the ablest man in the college. He was President of the Athenæan Society, and his essay against Radicalism for his M. A. degree was published in a pamphlet and was received with more attention because Professor Smyth was considered a Radical. Goodwin succeeded Longfellow, whose departure caused Mr. Davies to remark that other institutions not only borrowed our oil but took away our lamps also. Let me quote Justice Fuller's tribute to Dr. Goodwin, whose name and memory we honor highly in our Church: "The wide and varied learning, the accurate scholarship, the critical and incisive intellect of Goodwin, continued in other fields of usefulness the high distinction which accompanied his efforts here, while his remarkable power in debate gave him deserved weight in the councils of the Church of which he was a member." Cyrus Hamlin, the great missionary in Turkey, was with me one year in college. While there he made a perfect model of a steam engine, which is still preserved, and his natural gifts were developed by his Bowdoin training, so that he was enabled to meet the greatest difficulties in that far-off land, and to do a wondrous work in so many different lines. He is but one illustration showing that the faculties trained and the mind disciplined by a college education best fit a man for practical life and business affairs. He came to Alexandria in 1837 and wrote to me in 1899. I think we appreciated more highly our privileges than students seem to do now. The old college life formed habits of diligence, application and energy, taught us to use our wits, to receive an impulse not only from teachers but from fellow students. It certainly turned out men who have grappled successfully with the problem of life. It turned out the earliest of our great poets, Longfellow, and the first novelist of his age, Hawthorne, the Shakspere of human nature in fiction, who explored the deepest recesses of the human heart; not to mention those sons distinguished in the State, in religious work and in every department of life. I know of no author in the English language who has afforded me so much entertainment as Hawthorne. A master of English prose, he has covered every portion of its literature with the glory of his genius. His Wonder Book, suited to young and old alike; his Note Books, full of keen and delicate observation of all peoples and lands that he visited; his Short Stories and Novels, and his religious allegory, The Celestial Railroad, have beguiled many weary hours in my later life. CHAPTER VI. RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES. N the same class with Cyrus Hamlin, was Henry B. Smith, the Moderator of the General Assembly, and a broad-minded, noble-hearted man. He was converted while at Bowdoin and had wonderful influence on others. We like to recall these men, who, mingling with us on the playground and in the class-rooms as equals, have risen above their fellows and written their names on history's fair page. It was at Bowdoin College that nearly all of these men received their strong religious impressions and confessed Christ and decided on their course. It was particularly so of Calvin E. Stowe, of Jacob Abbott and his four brothers, of Rufus Anderson, for more than fifty years the Christian Secretary of State, as it were, in one of the great departments of Christ's kingdom, the American Board of Missions, of Cyrus Hamlin, who there decided to be a missionary; of Smith and Goodwin, as named above; of Ezra Abbott, reading from his Greek Testament as he led the Sundaymorning meeting of the "Praying Circle," which was one of the religious forces of the College-an Erasmus, it is said, in scholarship, and more than an Erasmus in moral courage; of George B. Cheever, that fervid and fearless prophet of the Lord; and of unnumbered others, whose names are written in heaven. John Rand of Portland, Me., my class-mate, is now the oldest graduate. He has had the settlements of large estates, and is a man of the highest integrity. In the village church which the students attended, the Rev. Asa Mead was for a time the minister. He had a stern, severe aspect and manner, and on one occasion, when the students were restless and were shuffling their feet, he shook his fist at them and reproved them very severely, and he was unpopular with them. He was followed by the Rev. George Adams, his exact opposite in every respect, and a model of Christian suavity and gentleness. I remember his texts and sermons to this day, after sixty-five years, especially a sermon on Deut. xxxii., 31: "Their rock is |