Schools and Schoolmasters

At Brown University— Conditions of college life in i860— Incidents

IN the summer of '56 the last term of preparatory-school

life closed, and in the fall of the same year Gordon was matriculated at Brown University. At one time he had been drawn to Dartmouth College, the noble and richly historic university of his native State; but various considerations led him to decide finally for the denominational school at Providence. Not the least important of these was the prestige of the great president, the Arnold of America, Francis Wayland, who had just closed his career as an educationalist, but whose fame and the immediate influence of whose multifarious labors were still strongly felt in the Christian circles of New England. With consummate ability and sagacity he had anticipated the whole course of university reform which is fast making of American colleges the most elastic, effective, comprehensive, and widely influential educational agencies in the world. In his own sensible and independent way he had opened evening lectures in practical subjects for the artisan class. Long before the days of university extension hundreds of Providence jewelers entered these courses in metallurgy, chemistry, and kindred subjects. It was he too who first emancipated the American college from the immemorial trivium of Greek, Latin, and mathematics. True, the curriculum was meager enough, even after the enrichment in courses which he brought about, if one compares it with the vast a la carte for '96 of Johns Hopkins or of the University of Chicago. Yet there were compensations which amply made up for any apparent poverty in instruction. Emphasis was laid on training and discipline. Power of assimilation rather than amount and variety of acquisition constituted the end of education. The claims of character, too, were considered, as well as those of scholarship.

The output of the New England college before the present era of expansion and specialization was, therefore, wonderfully true, tempered, and substantial. It was hand-made, of selected raw material, with the personal touch of such masters as Wayland, Mark Hopkins, and Timothy Dwight ineffaceably inwrought. These distinctive qualities, this peculiar timbre, which can be imparted only by human contacts, is more rare as universities become assimilated to the wholesale, factory tone of our civilization. The successful president now is the one who secures the most numerous legacies, the most sumptuous dormitories for his college. He no longer draws and moulds and shapes young men. He no longer visits and counsels and, if need be, prays with them. He has not the sense of accountability which made the great president of Brown say, quoting Arnold, that if he could ever receive a fresh boy from his father without emotion he would think it

high time to be off. He is now a mere executive.

And just as at that time there was no middle wall of partition 'twixt student and authorities, so there had not then arisen the minor distinctions of caste based upon wealth which now divide student from student. The children of Midas had not then built unto themselves stately and luxurious dwellings in the precincts of intellectualism. Beck Hall and Vanderbilt were undreamed of. Iron weighed more than gold. The youths in tennis flannels who gather and smoke hookahs in these gorgeous dormitories would have received little recogni-

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 25

tion among the sturdy, self-supporting, hard-battling fellows from the back farms. Poverty was the rule, affluence was the exception— a condition of things largely reversed in our Eastern universities. At Brown the catalogue summary of necessary expenses for 1856 foots up to the amusingly insignificant sum of sixty-seven dollars. This covered tuition, room-rent, lights, fuel, and minor expenses. The entire charges for a collegiate year, therefore, amounted to somewhat less than one fifth the present-day room-rent of a single student in one of the gilded fin-de-siecle palaces of Yale or Harvard. Board, of course, was not included in this estimate. It averaged for the poorer student something under two dollars a week. Students frequently boarded themselves, living, as did a contemporary of Gordon's at college who became distinguished later, upon the extremely meager sum of seventy-five cents weekly. As with Scotch students, oatmeal was in this instance a staple in the dietary. This inconsiderable pecuniary outlay enabled hundreds of young men who became afterward exceedingly useful in all walks of life to gain an education from which nowadays they would be debarred as by an impassable wall.

At best, even with these favoring circumstances, it was a hard struggle for one student in the late fifties. Assistance from home he could hardly look for. Church friends in Providence helped much; yet at times the exchequer verged perilously upon bankruptcy. On one occasion, when it seemed hardly possible to continue for want of money, Gordon started down Westminster Street in an aimless state of dejection. A sudden shower drove him into a porch. Somewhat later a ragged and wayworn negro hurried under the same cover, and, seeing the kindly student face, thought it an opportune time to beg. He laid his whole pitiable case, with its undoubted fringe of exaggeration and extended commentary, before his fellow-refugee. The latter, at the time as impecunious as Walter the Penniless himself, was of course unable to respond.

He explained his own plight, answering the other's fiction

with a detailed recital of his own difficulties. The new acquaintance listened with interest, and finally drew from his pocket a nickel, which he handed his anticipated benefactor with the remark that, after all, he thought himself better off than a struggling student.

Gordon was twenty years old when he entered upon his college course. As the average age was several years less, there was much that was boyish in the character of the lower classmen. The traditions of practical joking, now happily almost wholly faded out of university life, traditions surviving, perhaps, from the wandering student life of the middle ages with the tenacity of nursery rhymes, flourished with vigor. There were night-gown parades on hot summer evenings. There were burials of hated text-books in the blue waters of the Narragansett, when brass bands played solemn dirges and orators delivered Latin valedictories. There was much obnoxious hazing of freshmen. Boys in the full consciousness of second-year rank are apt to take special delight in humiliating those below them; it seems in some way to accentuate their recent promotion. In the present case their ardor was doubly inflamed by the fact that the subject to be treated was a student for the ministry, and possessed, therefore, presumably, with a wholesome aversion to rowdyism and nicotine.

When a freshman of but a few weeks' standing, Gordon was visited in his room, " smoked out," and imperiously ordered by his visitors to mount the table and preach a sermon. The new-comer's resources in this line had not been suspected. With admirable appositeness he chose as his text, "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves." Never was more pointed discourse delivered. Never was application of subject-matter to immediate circumstances made more mercilessly. The listeners, taking umbrage, rushed like beasts of Ephesus at the speaker, upset the table,

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 27

and would have treated him hardly indeed if his Christianity had not passed forthwith from its didactic to its muscular phase, with excellent results. He sprang at the ring-leader, tore his coat in halves, and, with the efficient cooperation of John Hay,* who just then appeared on the scene, routed the intruders from the premises.

The years in Brown were years of diligent application, of recognizable progress. In pure scholarship Gordon took but medium rank. The inadequacy of his " fit " was as ball and chain to the runner's ankle. Yet his native gifts were acknowledged by all. His reading at this time was exten-

sive and within certain limits multifarious in character. We

have before us a copy of Todd's "Index Rerum" close packed with quotations, indicating, as by graduated scale, the quantity of illustration and reference which was gathering for use in later years like water in a mountain pool. Carlyle, as was fitting in those days, occupies a prominent place in its pages. Byron, Coleridge, Mrs. Browning, Ruskin, Archbishop Leighton, Bunsen, Edward Irving, Pascal, Richter, St. Augustine, John Foster, and Tholuck are names that recur again and again. A love for devotional reading was early developed. Thomas Fuller's writings and the quaint " Religio Medici " of Sir Thomas Browne were favorites with the meditative young student. In his regular work, special aptitude in composition was noticeable. A warm interest in the classics, too, could not be wanting in those fortunate enough to read the Greek tragedies with Professor Harkness, and the Satires and Epodes of Horace with John E. Lincoln. The accurate scholarship, the delicate humor, the fine, discriminating literary sense of the latter made him for two generations the especial favorite of young men. To hear his " Bene," " Optime," after an unusually felicitous translation was suffi-

* Later known as the private secretary and biographer of President Lincoln. >.M-5say«t»-T'« a-^Sf^t"^

28 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON

cient reward for hours of night study. Here was no " gerundgrinder," but one to whom Latin was literature and the classics "humanities." To please "Johnny Link," as he was endearingly called, was an indirect way, therefore, of obtaining recognition for one's own scholarship and taste, inasmuch as that alone gratified him which was refined, subtle, deUcately flavored. During Gordon's second year a prize was offered for the best Latin essay. One of his classmates, who had unjustly, though good-naturedly, animadverted upon his diligence as a student, announced with boyish loquacity and with much confidence his determination to capture the prize. Gordon with characteristic reticence, coupled with a humorous resolve to defeat his confident friend, went to work, wrote out his theme, and passed it in to the committee. In due time it was returned with the announcement of his success. He had appealed to Professor Lincoln's inordinate love of Horace by importing into his paper as many Horatian expressions and turns of thought as he could. The flavor of the Odes, as of old Chianti, pleased the professor's palate. His vote was cast decisively for the essayist who shared his appreciation for the vers de societe of old Rome.

The severest test of character is that which considers the every-day life, which scrutinizes those close personal relations involved in the occupancy of a common room and the daily use of the same student-lamp. How well Gordon stood this test the following communication will show. The copartners on the long ladders at New London had entered Brown the same year. Throughout the college course they lived together in the third story of old University Hall, the windows of which look out over the elms of the campus upon the city and bay and westering sun below. So long an association is fruitful in incident. Many are the stories of those days which have come down to us illustrating the humor, the geniality, the bonhomie of Gordon's character. These traits were in later years,

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at least to outsiders, obscured by the gravity and preoccupation which the stress of great responsibilities occasioned. In younger days they had full rein. In company he was the first called upon to sing. The dialogues and comedies which he collaborated with his room-mate became a tradition of the preparatory school. There is one amusing story of these days— a story we should hardly venture to introduce if we had not heard it from the victim of its point himself which reminds one of a well-known incident connected with the Methodist leaders of the last century. On one occasion, when Wesley and Whitefield were on their evangelistic circuits together, they retired for the night to a single room. Whitefield, being very weary, tumbled into bed with scarce a prayer. Wesley, equally tired, insisted on longer devotions, but fell asleep on his knees, much to the amusement of Whitefield, whom he had chided for negligence. The latter made haste to relieve as far as possible Wesley's mortification by summarily waking him.

In the present instance no such mercy was shown. Gordon's room-mate, impulsive and full of enthusiasm for the Lord's work, was somewhat apt to question the interest of his undemonstrative friend along these lines. Being at one time greatly impressed with the need of a religious awakening in college, he went around inviting students to his room for concerted prayer. On the evening assigned for the meeting a dozen or more students met together. All were bent in earnest supplication. Some eight or nine had taken part, and the time had come for the organizer of the meeting himself to pray. After a long pause, it was perceived, to the great enjoyment of all, that he had dropped asleep. As if by one impulse, the rest arose and filed out of the room. Gordon himself remained, put out the lights, went to bed, and slept soundly until, several hours later, the chill morning air had brought his room-mate to a full consciousness of the situation.

It is in these terms, then, that this companion of the long student years characterizes his old friend

" I wish to bear testimony to the majestic character and exalted worth and influence of my classmate and lifelong friend. Dr. Gordon. For six years in academy and college a portion of that time as room-mates—we lived in relations of tenderest intimacy. The same serenity of disposition, the same fine equipoise that has marked his riper years was characteristic of his youth. I cannot recall, during all this period of uninterrupted intercourse, a single instance of petulance or irritation. I cannot remember a single utterance from his lips that he might have wished unspoken. His religious hfe was steadfast, cheerful, and uniform, free from short-lived raptures on the one hand, and seasons of lukewarmness on the other. The unfaltering purpose of declaring the gospel of the grace of God, with which his own life had been enriched, dominated him completely, and from this he never, amid the ambitions

and temptations of college Hfe, for one instant swerved. He

was a moral and spiritual leader in college, apparently without the slightest thought of being such, and without any special effort on his part, just as he has since been in the broader sphere of life. He realized more perfectly than any man I now recall the high ideal of a deep, genuine, uncompromising piety, without the least trace of austerity or sanctimoniousness or asceticism. There was in him a delightful vein of humor, always, however, so graciously tempered that it never descended, as is frequently the case, to the level of coarseness or levity, and was never suffered to become an occasion of wounding the feelings of the most sensitive. He was withal so natural, so consistent, so magnanimous, so charitable, that he won the love and admiration of all; yes, even of those who were utterly ignorant of or indifferent to the heavenly grace that dwelt so richly in him."

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It was in these years that a new and important tributary entered Gordon's life. We begin to find a greater volume of correspondence— letters, too, which reveal more precisely the interior man. It is as if, after a long, blank interim, a number of photographs had been taken in rapid succession, portraying all the finer lines of the heart's expression. Acquaintance had been formed with the young woman who became in later years his wife and the efficient helpmate in all his en-

terprises. A quarter-century after his happy college years

had closed, he returned to Providence, a trustee now of the university, and went up into the old room which he had occupied in the fifties. Sitting there with all the memories of the past flooding his mind, he wrote back to Boston this noble letter to her whom he always called the most valued treasure which he carried away from the university town

" No. 44 University Hall,

" Brown University, Providence, R. I.,

" June 21, i860.

[Actual date, June, 1882.] " Miss Maria T. Hale.

" Dear Friend: I am sitting in my room for a few moments after the commencement dinner meditating. I just saw you come down Prospect Street and turn down College Street, and I almost thought you cast a glance upward to my window, as if to say,... ' I would not object to your joining me in a walk.' Excuse my presumption in suggesting such an idea, but you know that I have now and then run down to join you, and you never were greatly opposed to my doing so. Well, I have just finished my studies in this honored university, and from my lofty lookout in this old ante-Revolutionary building I am gazing into the future and dreaming of what it shall be. I know you will pardon me for repeating my dream, since it is only a dream. It seemed to me that twenty-

32 ADONIRAM JUDSON CORDON

two years had passed, and the pale-faced, slender student had become a portly man of forty-six. He had become, moreover, a minister of a large city parish with a wide field and great responsibilities. Through the dim mists of futurity I see his house and his family. I count his children— five ruddy and splendid children; and a shadow in which the outlines of two others are faintly descried sleeping as though they were and yet were not. And there is the fair vision of the wife; I cannot name her here, but she looks strangely like one whom I just saw passing. I dream that people say of her that she is wonderfully efficient, and that a large share of her husband's success is due to her; that she has inspired him, who used to be rather slow and backward, with much of her energy and enthusiasm. They, say, indeed, that, between his hold and her push, the result is a pretty strong team; that they are the center of no mean circle of activities. And I dream that she sometimes interprets his natural reserve and stolidity and abstractedness as indifference, and she says that he doesn't appreciate her. Then his heart opens, and he says, ' Nay; never man had such a helpmeet, and if she bears many burdens and does much hard work for him, he thanks her in his heart, and prays that the Lord may spare her for many years to walk by his side.' And the thought became so emphatic and the emotions so strong that he repeated the last words aloud walk by his side— and that woke him up. Yes here I am in the window of 44, looking down College Street, and you are just coming back with a book in your hand, from the Athenaeum, I suppose. And so I have written it all out. When will you take another of those moonlight walks out toward the Red Bridge and round by the Friends' College? Excuse my boldness; for I remember that, though you are not shy, you are often a little offish— well, no matter; when shall we have the walk? And do so arrange it, if we go, that your venerable father shall not stand at the door to welcome

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 2>t,

you in and to wave me off with that sweeping gesture. But then I do not mean anything or much; that is, I don't mean to mean more than you would have me mean, since you have said that we must be no more than friends. So good-by from " Your esteemed friend,

"A. J. Gordon."