THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 THE COLLECTION OF 
 NORTH CAROLINIANA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Alsbrook McCall 
 
 C378 
 
 UK3 
 
 1859H.1 
 
UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 00039137004 
 
 FOR USE ONLY IN 
 THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/fiftyyearssinchoop 
 

 FIFTY YEAKS SINCE: 
 
 AN ADDRESS, 
 
 DELIVERED BETOKE TUB 
 
 ALUMNI OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, 
 
 ON THE 7TH OF JUNE, 1859, 
 
 (bEIXG the day before the annual COMirENCEMENT.) 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM HOOPER, 
 
 ONE OF TUE EOCIETV OF ALUMNI. 
 
 Forsan et base olim niemiuisse juvablt. 
 
 ViRQ. 
 
 Think ofl, ye brethren- 
 
 Think of the gladness of our youthful prime ; 
 It cometh not again — that golden time. 
 
 Motto to Student Life in Geruastt, 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 CHAPEL HILL: 
 PUBLISHED BY JOHN B. NEATHERY. 
 1861. . 
 
FIFTY YEARS SINCE: 
 
 AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE ALUMXI ASSOCIATION OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, 
 
 BY . i 
 
 WILLIAM HOOPER, D. D., LL. D., 
 
 June 1st, 1859. 
 
 Brothers of the Alumni — 
 
 Literary Children of one Alma Mater: 
 
 We come together at this annual festival, to salute and congratulate 
 each other — to look back on the past and compare it with the present — 
 to gratify an honest pride in contrasting the feeble and sickly infancy of 
 our literary mother with her present vigorous maturity, and to breathe a 
 common filial prayer that that vigorous maturity mayafcg flourish, and 
 not soon be succeeded by a languishing old age. 
 
 Two years ago, I delivered, at another College, what I expected would 
 be my final ofiiering at the shrine of the muses; but since the committee, 
 representing the public opinion, have not consented to give me a dis- 
 charge from this mode of paying a debt of filial gratitude, I submit to 
 their dictation, being glad to receive, in such appointment, their flattering 
 attestation that they yet detect' no mark of senility disqualifying me for 
 appearing before a commencement audience, and especially the audience 
 of 1859, so highly honored by the presence of the chief magistrate of 
 the republic. 1 am proud to find, from two astrocomical observations, 
 that Chapel Hill lies right in the orbit of Jupiter and his satellites, and 
 that the period of his revolution is about twelve years. I beg the pro- 
 fessor of astronomy here to make this entry in his Epliemeris, and to look 
 out for the recurrence of the same phenomenon about 1871; if indeed, 
 at that time, the head of this great republic be fitly symbolized by that 
 glorious planet, and be not shivered, ere that cycle rolls around, by some 
 
 % 
 
disastrous concussion, into a score of nameless asteroids. May heaven 
 avert the omen ! Had I said this at the city of Washington, and were I some 
 quarter of a century younger, his Excellency might consider this exordi- 
 um as the prelude to some application for office ; but on an academical 
 jubilee like this, and from a speaker bordering on three-score and seven, 
 he will receive it, I trust, only as the cordial and sincere expression of 
 that rejoicing which we all feel at the honor of this visit. Yes, a truce 
 from office-seeking here at least. We are glad to find that the President 
 has survived that period of vexatious importunity — that crown of thorns 
 which every President is obliged to wear on his first accession — and that 
 he is likely, from present appearances, to serve his country for many 
 years to come. 
 
 I believe it is expected of the speaker to the Alumni that he shall en- 
 tertain them with reminiscences of persons and things long gone by — the 
 longer the better. Hence the selection, for this year, of your humble 
 servant, there being very few now surviving who can number half a cen- 
 tury from their graduation. And although I am neither a bachelor nor 
 a widower, and therefore have no interest in making myself out younger 
 than I am with my fair auditors, yet I will merely hint to this benevolent 
 assembly that although it is just fifty years since I got my sheepskin, I 
 was then in my prsRtcxta, and had not yet put on the toga virilis. I shall, 
 however, be happy if I get through the task of this day without extorting 
 from some of my hearers the exclamation of the Ptoman satirist : <' The 
 old steed is broken down; take him from the turf before he disgraces 
 
 himself" * 
 
 Particularly ||ight my friends be anxious about me now as having to 
 perform my pa^ of the duties of this occasion after the display of this 
 mornina;. I assure them that I feel a great degree of tranquility in that 
 very consideration which they might deem a just cause of agitation and dis- 
 quietude, to-wit: That I am succeeding the orator 0/ the day. " I am no 
 orator as Brutus is." Upon him I roll the responsibility of supplying all 
 the eloquence due to the day. His shoulders are well able to bear the bur- 
 den ; while to me remains only the easier part of the master of ceremonies, 
 to announce to the audience — "Ladies and gentlemen, the concert is 
 
 over." f 
 
 When I look back through the vista of those fifty years and bring be- 
 fore my "mind's eye" the long train of alumni who have risen to emi- 
 nence and adorn their country, both at home and abroad, I may be in- 
 
 * Solve senescentem mature sanus equum ne 
 Peecet ad extremum, ridenclus. — Hor. 
 
 t This paragraph was added after hearing the splendid speech of Mr. Mc- 
 Rae in the forenoon. 
 
I^.'^JV 
 
 dulged in something of a spirit of glorying, if as a professor of the Uni- 
 versity, I have had any share in the formation of these ornaments of the 
 republic. I confess, when I look over the catalogue of graduates, and 
 see so many laureled heads into which it was my lot to pack a portion of 
 useful knowledge, I am elated with a little of that pride which swelled 
 the breast of the mother of the gods on Mount Olympus, as she looked at 
 her children around her : 
 
 See all her progeny, iUustrious sight ! 
 
 Behold and count them, as they rise to light; 
 
 She sees around her in the blest abode, 
 
 A hundred sons, and every son a god ! 
 
 I have said that it is perhaps expected of the alumni address, that it 
 shall entertain you with reminiscences; and I hope I shall not be too se- 
 verely judged, if in preparing this entertainment, I looked forward to a 
 hot day, a crowded house, and a great deal of grave business — all which 
 anticipations warranted me in the selection of reminiscences of an amus- 
 ing, as well as of an instructive kind. Indeed, a retrospect of Chapel 
 Hill antiquities, so far back as half-a-century, must needs bring up many 
 a scene of so comic a nature, 
 
 That to be grave, exceeds all power of face, 
 lu telling or in hearing of the case,. 
 
 The first of the "Waverly novels was entitled " Sixty Years Since," which 
 serves as a dat^ to the origin of those wonderful compositions. My tale 
 shall be entitled " Fifty Years Since," though some of my story will em- 
 brace incidents within fofty years of the present date ; and if it fall (as 
 of c'ourse it will) infinitely below that of the renowned Sir Walter, in all 
 other respects, it will rise above him in one; that, whereas most of his is 
 fiction, mine is sober fact. At least, I intend it to be so:" But it may be 
 with me as it was with Boswell in his celebrated ''Life of Dr. Johnson." 
 He tells us that it was his habit, after being in company with his hero, to 
 go immediately to his lodgings and record the sayings and doings of the 
 Doctor, at once, while they were fresh in his memory ; but that somc^ 
 times, when circumstances interfered, the facts lay on his memory for a 
 day or two, and that he thought the// were the letter of it — as tliey had a 
 chance to grow mellow ! 
 
 I hope that if any of my co-evals are present, who can look back as far 
 
 into our antiquities as myself, they will not have occasion to say, when 
 
 they hear some of my recitals : " There is a fact that has grown mellow 
 
 in his memory," or to compare me with the aged harper in Scott's Lay of 
 
 the Last Minstrel : 
 
 "Each blank in faithless memory void. 
 The poet's glowing thought supplied." 
 
 It is my part then, to-day, to go back to the very increnahnla of our 
 
 college — the cradle of its infancy, and to call up recollections of some 
 
wlio rocked that cradle. And I dare say while I am telling the story of 
 the poor and beggarly minority of our alma mater, some of her proud, 
 saucy sons of the present generation will smile scornfully at the humility 
 of our origin. When I tell them that the classes of President Polk, — of 
 Governors Branch, Brown, Manly, Morehead, Mosely, Spaight — of Judges 
 Murphey, Cameron, Martin, Donnell, Williams, Mason, Anderson; of Sen- 
 ators Jlangum and Haywood — of Drs. Hawks, Morrison, Grreen, and of 
 many other graduates forty years back, eminent for merit though not 
 holding olSce — when I tell the proud collegians of the present day, that 
 these men came out of classes consisting of nine, ten, fourteen, fifteen, the 
 largest twenty one, — -they will set up a broad laugh, and think how poor 
 a figure a class of ten or fifteen must cut on a commencement day ; and 
 one will say ; " Why I graduated with seventy-five, " and another : " I with 
 one hundred," and another: "I with a hundred and ten." Well, I know 
 bf no better way to shelter myself from the storm of your ridicule, than 
 by telling you a story. " Once upon a time," says -5^1sop, "a fox brought 
 out her whole brood of little foxes, and paraded them before the lioness, 
 and said : ' Look here ! see what a family I have, whereas you have but onel' 
 'I know said the queen of beasts that I bear but one at a time, but then 
 he is a lion !^ " I would also remind you, ^uug classics, of the story of 
 Niobe who boasted of her twelve children, and crowed over Latona, who 
 had only two ; but then Latona's children were the sun and moon ! For- 
 give, young gentlemen, these boastings of an old man. You know it is 
 the characteristic of such a one, to overrate the past, and underrate the 
 present. But I trust I am sufficiently sensible of the vast advances made 
 in all things at Chapel Hill since my day, to do full justice to the present 
 age. You have turned the wild into a garden. You have substituted for 
 the meagre bill of fare Avith which our minds were obliged to content 
 themselves, a table rich in all the stores of learning which a half-century 
 of unexampled progress has heaped upon it. I hope, therefore, when I 
 roll back the volume of our college history, and show you " the- day of 
 small things, " you will not despise too much our petty number, our hum- 
 ble accommodations, our rude manners, our hard fare, our scanty rations 
 and our limited curriculum of studies. Let not 
 
 Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, 
 The short and simple annals of the poor. 
 
 When I first knew Chapel Hill in January, 1804, the infant University 
 was but about six years old. Its only finished buildings were What are 
 now called the East Wing and the Old Chapel. The former was then 
 only two stories high, capable of accomodating one tutor and sixty stu- 
 dents by crowding four into a room. The faculty consisted of three : 
 President Caldwell, Prof. Bingham, and Tutor Henderscn. Their college 
 
titles were '^OldJoe," " Old Slick" and "Little Dick." "Old Joe/' 
 lioweyer, was only thirty years of age and possessed (as you shall hear in 
 the sequel) a formidable share of youthful activity. ''Old Slick" de- 
 rived his cognomen, not from age but from premature baldness, and the 
 extreme glossiness of his naked scalp. And " Little Dick, " a cousin of 
 the late distinguished Judge Henderson, though he had a brave spirit, was 
 not very well fitted by the size of his person, to overawe the three score 
 rude chaps over whom he was placed as solitary sentinel. As a nursery 
 of the college there was a preparatory school, taught by Matthew Troy and 
 Chesley Daniel. All things were fashioned after the model of Princeton 
 College, and that probably was fashioned after the model of the Scottish 
 universities, by old Dr. Witherspoon. If this were the case, it would 
 seem to account for the small quantum of instruction provided for us, if 
 Dr. Johnson spoke the truth when he said of Scottish education, that 
 "there every body got a mouthful, but nobody got a belly-full. " Into this 
 preparatory school, it was my fortune to be inducted, a trembling urchin 
 of twelve years, in the winter of 1804. It was then a barbarous custom 
 brought from the North, to rise at that severe season of the year before 
 day-light and go to prayers by candle-light; and many a cold wintry morn- 
 ing do I recollect, trudging along in the dark at the heels of Mr., after- 
 wards Dr. Caldwell, with whom I boarded, on our way to the tutor's room, 
 to wait for the second boll. In that year I read Sallust's War of Jugurtha 
 and Conspiracy of Cataline, under the tuition of Mr. Troj^, of whom my 
 recollections are affectionate, for he was partial to me, and taught me well 
 for those times. But I can recollect some of u-y classmates, grown young 
 men, upon whose backs he tried a blister-plaster, made of chiuquepin bark, 
 to quicken the torpor of the brain. Nor was he singular in his discipline. 
 Whether boys were then duller or more idle than now, I know not, but at 
 that time whipping was the order of the day. I had, before coming to 
 Chapel Hill, served three years under it, at Ilillsboro', where Mr. Flinn 
 wielded his terrible sceptre, and realized in our eye, the description of 
 Goldsmith : 
 
 " A man severe he was and stern to view ; 
 I knew him well, and every truant knew; 
 Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
 The day's disasters in his morning face." 
 
 This was literally verified with us, when Dr. Flinn came to school on 
 Monday morning, with his head tied with a crimson bandana handker- 
 chief. It was the bloody flag to us, and the very skin of our backs began 
 to tremble. 
 
 After serving such an apprenticeship at Hillsboro', the exchange for 
 Mr. Troy's administration was like exchanging the cowhide for the willow 
 twig, for Mr Flinn's "little finger was thicker than Mr. Troy's loins." But 
 
6 
 
 now after drawing aside the pall of oblivion from tliese infirmities of the 
 dead, I feel some twinges of remorse, as thougli I had rudely trodden on 
 the ashes of my departed instructors; for, having been myself a teacher, 
 ^11 my life, I ought to know how to make allowance for the trials of 
 teachers ; and if any one of you, my hearers, is accustomed to rail at the 
 tyranny of pedagogues, and to flatter yourself with the conceit, that if 
 you were one, you would always be able to control your temper, I would 
 only address you in the language which the advertisement uses respecting 
 sovereign recipes : " Try it," and if in six months you don't go and 
 hang yourself, you will, at least, have more charity for teachers, all the 
 days of your life. I told you that I remembered Mr. Troy with gratitude; 
 but I believe nothing he ever taught me, imprinted itself so deeply on 
 niy memory, as the burst of eloquence which the boys told me he had 
 made, when he was a student, upon the charms of Miss Hay, afterwards 
 the first Mrs. Gaston. Troy was given to the grandiloquent style, and on 
 ihis occasion Miss Hay, who was the belle of the day, with a small party 
 came to visit the Dialectic library. It was then- kept in one of the 
 ■common rooms inhabited by four students; and you may judge of the 
 tumult that was excited by every such visitation, and how much sweeping 
 ;and fixing up was required, and how many frightened boys ran to the 
 neighboring rooms, and shut the doors, all but a small crack to peep 
 ■through. On this memorable occasion, Troy had fixed himself in a 
 .corner of the room, whence he could contemplate the beautiful apparition 
 in silent ecstacy. After she was gone, the librarian called him out of his 
 trance, and said: ^'Well Troy, what do you think of her?" ''Oh! sir, 
 she's enough to melt the frigidity of a stoic, and excite rapture in the 
 breast of a hermit;" to which he might have added: 
 
 " And like another Helen, has fired another Troy." 
 A man that could talk in that way, appeared to me, in those days, to 
 have reached the top of Parnassus. 
 
 Having mentioned the library of one of the literary societies, I must carry 
 you backj ye proud Dialectics and Philanthropies of the present age, to 
 your humble birth, and reveal to you your inglorious antecedents. It maybe 
 good for you who now loll upon sofas and survey with triumph your thousands 
 of volumes to look back fifty-five years, and glance your eye "into the hole of 
 the pit whence ye were digged." The Dialectic library of this college, all of 
 it, was then contained in one of the cupboards of one of the common rooms 
 in the east building, and consisted of a few half-worn volumes, presented 
 by compassionate individuals, and I think it was in the habit of migrating 
 from room to room, as the librarian was changed, for you may be sure the 
 responsibility of taking care of such a number of books could not be 
 borne long by one pair of shoulders. And besides, there was some ambi- 
 
tion to choose, as librarian, a man who could wait on the ladies with 
 something of that courtly grace which distinguishes the marshals of this 
 polished age. But the cavaliers of that early time, poor fellows! had to 
 make their way to the ladies' hearts without any of the modern artillery 
 of splendid sashes, moustaches and goatees. The naked face, with native 
 flush or native pallor, was all their dependance. The cupboards were 
 not only small but full of rat-holes, and a large rat might have taken his 
 seat upon Rollins' History, the corner stone of the library, and exclaimed 
 with Robinson Crusoe : 
 
 "I am monarch of all I survey, 
 
 My title there's none to dispute." 
 
 Such' was the infancy of Dialectic knowledge; "such the meagre fare 
 provided for Dialectic literary appetite in those priiiieval days. 
 
 And what is told of one library may be told of the other, for they 
 were as much alike as the teeth of the upper and thrower jaw, and as 
 often came into collision. When one library got a book, the other must 
 have the same book, only more handsomely bound, if possible. I am 
 sorry to record that the contest between the two societies, at that time, 
 was not confined to an honorable competition which should have the 
 finest library, or the best scholars; but that it often amounted to personal 
 rancor and sometimes seemed to threaten a general battle. 
 
 The societies then had no halls of their own, but held their sessions on 
 different nights in the week in the old chapel, without any fire in the 
 winter, and besides, with the northwind pouring in through many a 
 broken pane. Think of this, ye pampered collegians, of this effeminate 
 age, and bless your stars that your college times have come fifty years 
 later. Before I come down to a somewhat later period, let me present 
 you with a sketch of the scenes going on under these old oaks in the 
 year 1804, fifty-five years ago, and let me draw from memory, if I can, a 
 picture of the 4th of July of that year, for that was the commencement 
 day — the great national festival being then the great college festival. 
 
 The waves of the revolutionary war seemed hardly to have subsided, 
 and hence military feeling and military habits intruded upon academic 
 shades and mixed themselves with the peaceful pursuits of literature. 
 The great object of display on commencement day was not the grad- 
 i- uates or their speeches, but a fourth of July oration, delivered by the 
 General, who had been chosen by the vote of the whole body of students, 
 preps and all, for free suffrage then prevailed, and a prep's vote was as 
 good a» any body's. The office of General and orator of the day was, of 
 course, an object of great ambition; and while the election was pending, 
 we preps felt our importance considerably augmented. Like the Nile, we 
 always began to swell about the end of June; but our inundation was 
 
goon over, not lasting longer tlian the fourth of July. On these occasions 
 the candidates would come down among us and take us in their arms and 
 caress us most lovingly, and invite us to their rooms in college, and, I 
 suppose, treat us there to gingercakes and cider, though as to that fact, I 
 have no distinct recollection; but all of you who are versed in the ways 
 of candidates, will admit it to be very probable that they did. As well 
 as I recollect, there was elected, beside the General or orator, the 
 General's aid. On this occasion Thomas Brown, son of the late Gen. 
 Brown, of Bladen, and brother-in-law of the late Gov. Owen, was 
 elected General, and Hyder Ally Davie, was second in command. 
 
 All things being duly arranged, the General, clad in full regimentals, 
 with cocked hat and dancing red plume, placed himself at the head of 
 his troops (for we wer8 all turned into soldiers for the nonce) and marched 
 up to the foot of the ''Big Poplar," where was placed for him a rostrum, 
 upon which he mounted, and, all the military disposing themselves before 
 him, he gracefully took off his plumed helmet, and made profound 
 obeisance to the army; and if a prep's bosom ever throbbed with proud 
 emotions and ever thrilled with anticipations of the pleasure of being a 
 great man, our hearts felt that throb and thrill on that day. I can tell 
 you nothing of the graduating class, or their speeches. My childish 
 fancy was taken up with the military display, though we had no music to 
 march to but the drum and the fife. If we had had such a band as you 
 have here to-day, it might have been too much for us — few perhaps would 
 have survived it. 
 
 The ball at night was productive of an incident of some seriousness 
 and importance. The old Steward's Hall, which some of you have reason 
 still to recollect to your sorrow, was then the ball-room. The floor was 
 covered with spectators, except the spots left vacant for the dancers. Of 
 course the dancers had to pull their partners to their position through a 
 dense thicket of gentlemen, five deep. This may well be called "thread- 
 ing one's way,'^ I should think. In such circumstances dancing in the 
 month of July, must have been delectable work, and must have always 
 involved the risk of such unhappy rencounters as the one I am about to 
 describe : Hyder Davie, aid-de-camp to Gen. Brown, in cutting the pigeon- 
 wing before his partner, came down, rough-shod, upon the toes of Henry 
 Chambers, of Salisbury. It was borne with, the first time, as an acci- 
 dent and overlooked ; but upon coming round the second time, it was re- 
 peated, and consequently was obliged to be considered as an intended in- 
 sult. The wounded toe, which is sometimes the seat of honor, called the 
 offending heel out of doors, and demanded an explanation. It resulted 
 in an engagement, in which Chambers gave a blow or two, for which he 
 received a stab or two in the neck, from the pen-knife of Davie ; for in 
 
those simple days bowie-knives were not invented, nor arms worn, except 
 openly by soldiers. The ijext day a solemn trial of the case was held in 
 the chapel, by the trustees, among whom were Gen. Davie, Col. Polk, 
 (chairman,) Gov. Martin, Messrs. Cameron, Gaston, Nash and others, 
 since the men of mark in our State. What decision the trustees came to, 
 is not recollected, but I believe the combatants came off even. The ladies, 
 the next daj^, were found to have taken sides, some for the heel and some 
 for the toe, like the Little Endians and Big Endians, familiar to the read- 
 ers of Gulliver. 
 
 I will detain you on this part of my subject only a moment, to call 
 your attention to two things characteristic of the age. The first is, the 
 spirit of the times indicated by the name Hyder Ally, given to his son, by 
 Gen. Davie, and that of Tippoo Saib, given to his son by Maj. Pleasant 
 Henderson. That two such men should have given their sons such out- 
 landish names, in honor of two Hindoo despots and semi-barbarians, be- 
 cause they were at war with Great Britain, affords a lively idea of the old 
 flame against the mother country, still burning in the breasts of the sur- 
 viving officers of the revolution. 
 
 The second reflection suggested by the incident before us, is the dimin- 
 utive size of the ladies of those days. How unambitious, how feeble 
 minded they must have been to be contented with occupying no more 
 space in the world, and in the eyes of men, to be pulled, that way ,through 
 a zig-zag maze of rough arms and shoulders, at the imminent risk of hang- 
 ing by the hair or losing a comb or necklace in the transit. The ladies 
 of the present day, have learned too well their just rights, to be satisfied 
 with anything less than two thirds of this wide, wide world. There is no 
 limit to their inventive genius when it is stimulated by an encroachment 
 on their rightful domains. They have added to the dimensions of their 
 fame, as well as of their persons, by giving birth to a new order of ar- 
 chitecture. A modern fine lady is, herself, a novel and wondrous speci- 
 men of architecture. Look at those two delicate little ankles ! From 
 the time of the erection of tJie Parthenon — from the time of the erection of 
 the domes of St. Peter's and St. Paul's, down to the erection of the domes 
 at Washington or Raleigh, was it ever supposed — would it ever have been 
 believed — did it ever enter into the heads of Phidias, Michael Angelo, or 
 jiSir Christopher Wren, that two such slender columns would have support- 
 ed so stupendous a dome — especially columns constructed on the most un- 
 artistic of all principles, the inverted cone? It can be classed with no order 
 of architecture now extant. We shall have to invent a new name for it, 
 and I can think of none more appropriate than the Umbrella Order of 
 Architecture. They who have dared to prop up such a magnificent fabrio 
 upon such a pedestal, have found out the joou sto of Archimedes, and cs^ 
 move the universe. 2 
 
xU 
 
 It was at this commencement, (1804) I think that Greek was made a 
 part of the college course. Got. Martin, if I jecollect, was the proposer 
 of the measure. ^' You study logic/' said hi, "and you don't know the 
 word from which the term is derived." No doubt the Governor gave 
 some better arguments (if I had been old enough to cherish them) for 
 substituting the classics of Greece for those of France, which last had 
 then a factitious importance and popularity from the recent, splendor of 
 Voltaire, from our late obligations to the country of La Fayette, and from 
 the overwhelming interest excited by the first French revolution. A lit- 
 tle French had, before this time, been accepted in the place of Greek, and 
 a Frenchman had been a necessary '^ part and parcel" of the faculty. Of 
 course, to tornaent, him and amuse themselves with his transports of rage, 
 and his broken English, was a re^lar part of the college fun. The ti-us- 
 tees after some experience found that it was better to have French taught 
 by a competent American, though with a little less of the Parisian accent, 
 than to have to fight daily battles to redress the grievances of a persecu- 
 ted monsieur. Greek after its introduction, became the bug-bear of col- 
 lege. Having been absent when my class began it, I heard, on my return, 
 such a terrific account of it, that I no mote durst encounter the Greeks 
 than Xerxes when he fled in consternation across the Hellespont, after 
 the battle of Salamis. Rather than lose my degree, however, after two 
 years, I plucked up courage, and set doggedly and desperately to work, 
 prepared hastily thirty Dialogues of Lucian, and on that stock of Greek 
 was permitted to graduate. As for Chemistry and Diflferential and Inte- 
 gral Calculus and all that, we never heard of such hard things. They had 
 not then crossed the Eoanoke, nor did they appear among us, till they 
 were brought in by the northern barbarians, about the year 181^. Yet 
 notwithstanding the poor showiiig we could make as to faculty an4 course 
 of study, the secretary of the board of that day, was very ambitious of 
 opening a sisterly correspondence and communion with all the colleges 
 of the United States. He sent for all their Latin Catalogues, and in or- 
 der to be even with them, made up out of his own stock of Latin a Cata- 
 logue for us, and difi"used it through the land, from Maine to Georgia. 
 Now this was v6ry unwise policy in that officer, for we were then in the 
 very egg-shell of our existence, and ought to have concealed our nakedness 
 from our mocking brethren of the North. This Latin pamphlet was iu 
 every respect a sorry looking afi'air. It was gotten up at Raleigh, on 
 coarse paper, and it can be no ofi'ence now to say, that Raleigh was not at 
 that era a fortunate place of issue for a Latin pamphlet. Rut what was 
 worse, it was disfigured with several sad blunders in the Latin (for I 
 don't know that Latin is any part of the qualifications of a secretary of 
 the board) and exhibited to the admiring world the following imposing 
 
11 
 
 Senatus Acadcmicus : President Caldwell, wto tauglifc mathematics, 
 natural and moral philosophy, and 4id all the preaching. Your humble 
 SERVANT was professor of languages, in general, I suppose ; all, ancient 
 and modern; and William D. Moseley (the future governor of Florida) 
 vins tutor. The professor of languages was of course responsible for tihis 
 elegant and classical production, in which among other beauties, I recol- 
 lect the treasurers of the board were called in conspicuous capitals treas- 
 URARil ! I writhed under the mortification a long time, and was always 
 afraid of meeting a professor from the North, lest he should ask me what 
 was the Latin for treasurer. 
 
 The South building, our neighbor over there, was^hen in an unfinished 
 state, carried up a story and a half, and there left for many years to battle 
 with the weather unsheltered; but still it was inhabited. "Inhabited!" 
 you will say, ''by what? By toads and snails and bats, I suppose." No 
 sir, by students. Risimi teneatis amici? 
 
 As the only dormitory that had a roof was too crowded for study, and 
 as those who tried to study there spent half tlie evening in passing laws 
 CO regulate the other half, many students left their rooms as a place of 
 study entirely, and built cabins in the corners of the unfinished brick 
 walls, and quite comfortable cabins they were; but whence the plank 
 came, out of which those cabins were built, your deponent saith not, 
 SuflDice it to hint that in such matters college boys are apt to adopt the 
 code of Lycurgus : that there is no harm in privately transfering property, 
 provided you are not caught at it. In such a cabin your speaker and 
 dozens like him hiberpated and burned their midnight oil. As soon as 
 spring brought back the swallows and the leaves, we emerged from our 
 , dens and chose some shady retirement where we made a path and a 
 promenade, and in that embowered promenade all diligent students of 
 those days had to follow the steps of science, to wrestle with its diflScul- 
 ties, and to treasure up their best acquirements : Ye remnants of the 
 Peripatetic school ! 
 
 "Ah! ye can tell how hard it is to climb 
 
 The steep where fame's proud temple shines afar ! " 
 
 They lived ivh dio, like the birds that caroled over their heads, "But 
 how," you will say, "did they manage in rainy weather?" Aye, tibat's 
 ■ the rub. Well, nothing was more common than, on a rainy day, to send 
 in a petition to be excused from recitation, which petition ran in this 
 stereotype phrase : " The inclemency of the weather rendering it impos- 
 sible to prepare the recitation, the Sophomore class respectfully request 
 Mr. Ehea to excuse them from recitation this afternoon." To deliv^er 
 this mission to the Professor I was appointed envoy ordinary (not extraor- 
 dinary) and plenipotentiary, being a little fellow hardly fifteen, and 
 
12 
 
 perhaps somewliat of a pet with the teacher. The Professor, a good- 
 natured, indolent man, after affecting some vexation, (though he was 
 secretly glad to get off himself,) and pushing the end of his long nose 
 this way and and that way some half dozen times with his knuckles, 
 concluded in a gruff voice with : "Well get as much more for to-morrow." 
 The shout of applause with which I was greeted upon reporting the 
 success of my embassy resembled, (if we may compare small things with 
 great,) the acclamations with which Mr. Webster was hailed by the 
 nation upon happily concluding the Ashburton treaty in 1842, by which 
 war with Great Britain was prevented. Mr. Webster may have been 
 greater, but he was ffot prouder than I was at the successful issue of my 
 negotiations. Who knows but I might have been a first rate diplomate, 
 if I had followed up these auspicious beginnings ! And what do you 
 think was the lesso7i from which a deliverance for one day was the occa- 
 sion of such tumultuous joy? Why it was Morses geography, which 
 was then the main Sophomore study, contained in two massy octavos, and 
 to recite off which, like a speech, page by page, was the test and the 
 glory of the first scholar of the class. 
 
 Dr Morse was, with us, the great man of the age, and stood as high as 
 does now his son, the inventor of the telegraph ; and that notwith- 
 standing he had stigmatised our State by mentioning under the head of 
 " manners and customs of North Carolina," that a fashionable amusement 
 of our people in their personal rencounters was, for the combatant who 
 got his antagonist down to insert his thumb into the corner of his eye 
 and twist out the ball; which elegant operation they called gouging. 
 This slur upon national character would, now-a-days, have banished his 
 book from our State. It excited so much the wrath of one of our repre- 
 sentatives in Congress, Wm. Barry Glrove, of Fayetteville, that he 
 declared if he ever met with Dr. Morse he would gouge him. He did 
 meet with the Doctor, who had heard of the threat, but instead of execu- 
 ting his purpose they had a hearty laugh over the story. Dr. Morse 
 alleging that he had derived the account from Williamson. 
 
 Our geographical recitations were enlivened by some rare scenes, one 
 or two of which I will venture to relate, though they are almost too 
 farcical for this dignified assembly, and yet they are among the things, 
 ''as my Lord Verulam remarks, which men do not willingly let die." 
 The class was reciting on Greenland. The youth under examination was 
 
 , I do not feel safe to mention his name, for he may be here 
 
 among us for aught I know, {the speaker looMing anxiously over tlie 
 crowd,) but if he is, he will be easily known by the length of his ears, 
 and there are no animals on earth that bite and kick harder than the 
 long-eared tribe. We will, therefore, indicate him by the name Satcney. 
 
13 
 
 Mr. Sawney, says tlie Professor, can you tell me anything about the 
 animals of Greenland? "Yes, sir, there's one called the seal." What 
 kind of a animal is it? "I dont remember exactly, sir, but I believe he 
 says it is a very amphib — a very amj)hihiohiis kind of animal sir." The 
 boys plagued him about this new kind of animal until he became as. 
 irritable as a nest of wasps by the way-side. Another student, whom we 
 will disguise under the name of Rlijgie, used to amuse various compa- 
 nies by telling the story upon Sawney. Now Riggie was the last man 
 that ought to have made people merry over the blunders of others, for 
 he had got his own nickname by his ludicrious pronunciation of Riga, a 
 Russian town on the Baltic. He was asked what were the chief towns 
 in Russia ? He mentioned several, and among them Riggie on the 
 Baltic, pronouncing the first syllable of the last word as it is- heard in 
 halance. The name Riggie stuck to him forever afterwards. But it 
 often happens that he who smarts most under a joke is most ready to 
 avert pursuit by throwing ridicule upon others — as in the street, the 
 thief, hearing the hue and cry after him, escapes by echoing the cry 
 ''stop thief!" and joining in the chase. Sawney, goaded by Ricgie's 
 persecution, determined to avenge himi^elf ; so he laid a trap for him. 
 He got a friend to invite a company including Riggie into his room, and 
 to call for the story, while in the meantime, Sawney concealed himself 
 under the bed. Riggie, alas ! unconscious of the Trojan horse within 
 the walls, was going on with his story, full sail, the audience convulsed 
 with the enjoyment of the present and the anticipation of the paulo-post- 
 future; when in the very fifth act of the drama, out popped Sawney from 
 his ambush, and pitched into the dismayed comedian. I shall not 
 , attempt to describe the battle ; but it may well be supposed that Sawney, 
 stung with wounded pride and bursting with long imprisoned rage, 
 fought with more desperation, and that his adversary, startled by a foe 
 emerging suddenly from ambush, must have fought to a disadvantage. 
 That was the last time I imagine that Riggie, or any body else, told the 
 story of avipldhiobus, nor would it have been revived to-day had I not 
 trusted that a lapse of more than fifty years had either removed our hero 
 from the reach of all earthly ridicule, or mollified his resentment into 
 merriment ; or at least, that being unnamed in my annals, he would take 
 care not to write his name under the picture by attacking me. But if he 
 or any other witness of the facts were here to challenge my truth and to 
 show what a good story I had made out of nothing, I suppose you all 
 would thank him about as much as you would thank a man, who, after 
 you had dined pleasantly, as you supposed, upon a good fat hare, should 
 come forward, show you the paws and convince you that what you had 
 enjoyed so sweetly, was nothing but a cat. 
 
14 
 
 Sucli adventures as the foregoing were more apt to. happen with soph- 
 mores than with other classes. To.^save them- from tl^e clutches of Dr. 
 Morse, on a rainy day, was one of the chief honors of my sophomore 
 year. Sophomores have always been hard fellows to deal with. This 
 results from their amphibious nature, and colleges have given them a 
 name Qiophos moros) expressive of their compound character, partly wise 
 and partly foolish. They are in a transition state, half-man and half-boy; 
 their voice alternating in a most ludicrous manner between the cdto and 
 the hass, so that, in the dark you would suppose it was two persons 
 talking. Their compositions too have the same mixed character; like 
 comets i\Qj have a small nucleus with a prodigious expanse of tail.* Let 
 not my young friends present, who happen to be sophomores, take umbrage 
 at these pleasantries. I aiji not describing the sophomores of the present 
 day, nor any specific sophomores. lam describing sophomores in the 
 abstract, Jiot in the concrete, and of course, no individual has a right to ap- 
 propriate the description to himself, sin3ethe sophomore concrete has always 
 specific peculiarities which shield him from being identified with the 
 sophomore abstract. Besides the glory of a sophomore is not in what he 
 is, but in what he is to he. He is an eaglet. Now an eaglet, just 
 begining to be fledged, may not be a very comely bird, and its attempts 
 to fly may be rather awkward; but then in a month or two, he is to be 
 the bird of Jove, soaring into the eye of the sun, and bearer of the 
 thunderbolt. 
 
 Junior Life. — Let me now give a sketch of junior life,some fifty years 
 ago in these precincts. There being but three teachers in college, (pres- 
 ident, professor of languages and tutor.) the seniors and juniors had but 
 one recitation per day. The juniors had their first taste of geometry, in, 
 a little elementary treatise, dra)\Ti up by Dr.^ Caldwell, in manuscript, and 
 not then printed. Copies were to be had only by transcribing, and in 
 process of time, they, of course, were gwarming with errors. But this 
 was a decided advantage to the junior, who stuck to his text, without 
 minding his diagram. For, if he happened to say the angle of A wag 
 equal to the angle of B, when in f:ict the diagram showed no angle at B 
 at all, but one at C, if Br. Caldwell corrected him, he had it always in his 
 power to say: "Well, that was what I thought myself, but it ain't so in 
 the book, and I thought you knew better than X." We may well suppose 
 that the Doctor was completely silenced by this unexpected application of 
 the argumentum ad liominem. You see how good a training our youthful 
 junior was under, by a faithful adherence to his text, to become a "strict 
 constructionist" of the constitution, when he should ripen into a politi- 
 
 ■*In Webster's Dictionary, Mr. Calhoun's authority is given for the word 
 sopliomorical in this sense. 
 
15 
 
 cian. Tne junior having safely got tlirougli witli his mathematical recita- 
 tion at II o'clock, was firee till the next day at the same hour. And the first 
 thing lie had to determine vvas, what would be the most agreeable method 
 of spending the rest of the day. Shall he ramble into the country after 
 fruit, or shall he go a fishing, of shall he make iip a party and engage a 
 supper in the suljurbs, at "Fur Craig-s?'' The last measure was often 
 adopted, because of our hard fare at Commons. Accordingly a party of 
 of some half dozen would go out and engage a supper of fried chicken, 
 or chicken pi^ biscuit and coffee. It was waited for with extreme impa-. 
 ticnce, and many yawnings and other symtoms of an aching void. At 
 length it came upon the table, like the classical cocna of "^the Romans, 
 about three or four, P. M. The guests sat djpwn, at twenty-five cents per 
 head; and if you consider the leanness of our dinners at the Steward's 
 Hall, you will be apt to suspecVthat the entertainer did not make much by 
 that bargain. I'll tell you what, gentlemen, it will do well enough for 
 you, who live in these palmy times, and fare stimptuously every day, to 
 call the University your alma mater, y^r leiiir/na 2)arcns, and all that, 
 now that she is%rown to be a fat, buxom lady, with a snug clear income 
 of fifteen thousand a year. But when I first knew her, she was a very 
 poor woman, and her children of those days would have more appropri- 
 ately called her ^'paxqierima mama!" for slie dealt out very scanty 
 allowance to her family either for body or mind, and treated her sons as 
 movers to our new States treat their horses ; she turned them out at night 
 to pick up what they could. The truth \&,"her mother the State, acted a 
 very unnatural part towards her, and, soon ^after she was born, seemed to 
 take a dislike to her own offspring, and to try to starve it. Do you wish 
 to know the ordinary bill of fare at the Steward's Hall, fifty years ago ? 
 As well as I recollect board per annum was thirty-five dollars! This, as 
 you may suppose, would not support a very luxurious table, but the first 
 body of trustees were men who had seen the revolution, and they thought 
 that sum would furnish as good rations as those lived on who won our _ 
 liberties: Coarse corn bread was the staple food. At dinner the only 
 meat was a fat middling of bacon, surmounting a pile of coleworts; and 
 the first thing after grace was said (and sometimes before) was for one 
 man, by a single horizontal sweep of his knife, to separate the ribs and 
 lean from the fat, monopolize all the first to himself, and leave the 
 remainder for his fellows. At breakfast we had wheat bread and butter 
 and coffee. Our supper was coffe© and the corn bread left at dinner, 
 without butter. I remember the shouts of rejoicing when we had 
 assembled at the door, and some one jumping up and looking in at the 
 window, made proclamation: "Wheat bread for supper boys!" And 
 that wheat bread, over which such rejoicings were raised^ believe me 
 
16 
 
 gentlemen and ladies, was manufiictured out of wheat we call seconds, or, 
 as some term it, gruclgeons. You will not wonder, if, after such a supper, 
 most of the students welcomed the approach of night, as beasts of prey, 
 that they might go a prowling, and seize upon everything eatable within 
 the compass of one or two miles; for, as I told you, our boys were follow- 
 ers of the laws of Lycurgus. Nothing was secure from the devouring 
 torrent. Beehives, though guarded by a thousand stings — all feathered 
 tenants of the roost — watermelon and potato patches, roasting ears, &c., 
 in fine everything that could appease hunger, was found missing in the 
 morning. These marauding parties at night were often wound up with 
 setting the village to rights. I will relate one of these nocturnal adven- 
 tures, and it was only "iinmn e plurihus." I must premise that Dr 
 Caldwell seems to have made it a part of his fixed policy, that no evil- 
 doer should hope to escape by the swiftness of heels, and that whoever 
 was surprised at night in any act of mischief, should be run down, caught 
 and brought to justice. Whether the Doctor brought that feature of his 
 policy from Princeton, where he was educated, or whether, being 
 conscious that nature had gifted him with great nimblentss of foot,he was 
 a little ambitious of victory in that line, I will not determine; but certain 
 it is, that he was in the habit of rambling about, at night, in search of 
 adventures, and whenever he came across an unlucky wight engaged in 
 taking off a gate, building a fence across the street, driving a brother 
 calf or goat into the chapel, or any similar exploit of genius, he no sooner 
 hove in sight than he gave chase; nor did the youthful malefactor spare 
 his sinews that night; for be knew that if he ever ran for life or glory, 
 now was the time. Homer makes his hero Achilles, the swiftest as well 
 as the bravest on the plains of Troy. No foe could match him in 
 battle or escape him by flight. Dr. Caldwell was the podas okus Achilles 
 of Chapel Hill, and he had more occasion for powers of pursuit than of 
 contest, for his antagonists uniformly took to flight. You call this a 
 "fast age," gentlemen, and so it is, but I don't know a man of this 
 generation who is faster than was Dr. Caldwell. He liked to go fast in 
 everything, and therefore he was not satisfied to take two days in getting 
 to Raleigh. He and I have set out for the metropolis in the morning, 
 and stopt the first night at Pride's, ten miles this side, such was the state 
 of the roads. Who knows but such snail-like progress as this suggested 
 to him the first idea of the present railroad from Beaufort to the 
 mountains, the honor of which, I believe, is now conceded to him? 
 Now, ! muse, that didst inspire Homer to describe Achilles' pursuit of 
 Hector, three times round the walls of Troy; or thou gentle muse, who 
 didst breathe thy soft afflatus upon Ovid when he described the race 
 between Apollo and fair Daphne; or thou Caledonian muse, who didst 
 
17 
 
 preside over "Walter Scott, wlien he sung the race of Fitz James after 
 Murdock of Alpine, or over Robert Burns, when he made immortal the 
 flight of Tarn o' Shanter from the witches, — either of you or all of the 
 nine at once, assist me to describe the race between President Caldwell 
 and Sophomore Faulkner, on the night of the — day of — , 18 — . The 
 President lived at that time where his successor now lives, and was 
 returning about bed time " from walking up and down upon the earth,"* 
 to see if any of the students were — where they ought not to be. As he 
 was mounting the stile which stood where Dr. Wheat's south-east corner 
 now stands, he spied two young men, busily engaged in building a fence 
 from that corner across the street to the opposite corner. This, by the 
 way, was always the difficulty in carrying out the manual labor system in 
 our schools, and constituted the grand distinction between negro-labor 
 and student-labor: that the negro fenced in the field and hoed up the 
 weeds; the student hoed up the cotton and fenced in the street. The 
 lads had just before his appearance heard that portentous snapping of the 
 ankles, which was a remarkable peculiarity of Dr. Caldwell's locomotives 
 and was very useful to the evil-doers in enabling them to get several 
 yards the start in the race. As soon as they heard this premonitory crep- 
 itation (which, I suppose, they were wont to consider as a providential 
 forewarning of danger, like the rattle of the rattle-snake) one of the 
 fencemakers, whose nom de gi(crre was Dog, skulked into a corner and 
 was passed by. Faulkner sprang forward. But I forgot that Homer 
 always spends a line or two in describing his heroes, before he brings 
 them into action. So I must suspend the race, till I have given my 
 audience some idea of Faulkner's person and character. He was a tall, 
 bony, gaunt and grim looking fellow, with shaggy threatening eyebrow — 
 had been at Norfolk during the war of 1813-14, as a soldier or 
 officer, and had contracted a soldier's love of adventure and frolic, and 
 like Macbeth, would have run from nothing born of mortal, if he had 
 been engaged in a good cause. But building a fence across the street at 
 night, his conscience set down as a deed of darkness, and therefore proved 
 like the conscience of one of the ' murderers of the Duke of Clarence in 
 Shakspeare's Bichard III. ''This thing conscience," says he, "is a 
 blushing, shame-faced spirit, that mutinies in a man's bosom; it fills one 
 full of obstacles. A man cannot steal but it accuseth him ; a man cannot 
 swear but it checks him. It made me once restore a purse of gold that 
 
 * Should any of my more serious readers complain of an impropriety in 
 this quotation from Job 1 : vii ; they Avill perhaps find an apology for the 
 allusion in the fiict, well known to all alumni of that period, that LiahoJus 
 shortened into Bolus, was the common nickname of the PresiJcnt, and that 
 while engaged in their deeds of • darkness, they would just as willingly have 
 seen the one as the other. 
 
 3 
 
18 
 
 by cliance I found. It beggars any man that keeps it. I'll not meddle 
 with it. It is a dangerous tiling. It makes a man a coward." So it 
 proved with the soldier of Norfolk on that memorable night. His con- 
 science made him a coward, but perhaps it enabled him to run the faster on 
 that occasion, and he might have escaped had any but " the swift-footed 
 Achilles " given chase. But fate had doomed him to lose this race: 
 
 Forth at full speed the fence-man flew — 
 
 Faulkner of Norfolk prove thy speed, 
 
 For ne'er had sophomore such need ; 
 
 With heart of fire, and foot of wind, 
 
 The fierce avenger is behind ; 
 
 Fate judges of the rapid strife, 
 The forleit death, the prize is life. 
 He leaves the gates, he leaves the walls behind 
 Achilles follows like the winged wind ; 
 Thus at the panting dove a falcon flies, 
 (The swiftest racer of the liquid skies ;) 
 Just when he holds or thinks he holds his prey, 
 Obliquely wheeling through the ^rial way, 
 With open beak and shrilling cries he springs. 
 And aims his claws and shoots upon his wings, 
 Just so around and round the chase they held 
 One urged by fury, one by fear impelled ; 
 Thus step by step where'er the Trojan wheeled 
 There swift Achilles compassed round the field ; 
 So on the laboring heroes pant and strain. 
 While that but flees and this pursues in vain ; 
 Thus three times round the Trojan walls they fly, 
 The gazing gods lean forward from the sky, 
 Jove lifts the golden balances that shoAV, 
 The fates of mortal man and things below ; 
 Here each contending hero's lot he tries 
 And weighs with equal hand their destinies. 
 Low sinks the scale surcharged with Faulkner's fate — 
 Thus heaven's high powers the strife did arbitrate : 
 Just then the Faulkner tripped, and prostrate fell, 
 And on the sprawling body pitched Caldwell! 
 
 Having thus disposed of one of the fence-makers, the victorious Presi- 
 dent went back in quest of the other, who instead of coming to the assis- 
 tance of his friend, had lost no time in leaving the field of action. The 
 President after beating the bush awhile, returned to the college, where 
 in the mean time, Faulkner, with clipped wings and fallen crest, had 
 gathered a party in one of the rooms, and was telling the fortunes of the 
 night. Little did he dream that his exulting conqueror was standing 
 close by, in the dark, listening to every word. *' And what became of 
 Dog?" inquired one of the party. ^'Oh! Dog, he took to the woods and I 
 dare say he is running yet." When the cOurt met, the next day, to try 
 the delinquents, it appeared in evidence from the tutor, that Bog was the 
 sobriquet of Junius Moore. He was accordingly startled by a summons 
 served upon him by old Daniel Bradley, the college constable, to appear 
 
before tlie faculty as particcps criminis with. Faulkner. They were both 
 charged with what the lawyers might call tortuously doing a tortuous act. 
 In plainer language with, feloniously, wickedly, and with malice afore- 
 thought, then and there, laying down, making, building and constructing 
 a Virginia fence across the street, against the peace and dignity of the 
 State. Gentlemen, you who have read Cicero's graphic description of 
 the confusion of face and dumbfouudeduess of Cataline's accomplices 
 when the consul confronted them with all the damning evidences of their 
 guilt, you can conceive and none but you, the looks and behavior of the 
 two fencemakers, when Dog was thus unexpectedly arraigned at the bar. 
 '^ They were so amazed and stupefied," says Cicero, "they so looked upon 
 the ground, they so cast furtive glances at each other, that now they seem- 
 ed to be no longer informed on by others, but to inform on themselves." 
 What the faculty did with the offenders I do not recollect, but remember, 
 young gentlemen, it is all upon the faculty-book, and I hope none of you 
 are ambitious of a place in that chapter of the history of the University or 
 to be enrolled in the Newgate calendar. 
 
 As for Dog, he deserved a better name, for he was a native born poet, 
 and he and Philip Alston (a graduate of 1829,) are among the few of 
 our alumni on whose birth Melpomene did smile. Had Moore lived he 
 might have written something to justify these praises. Alston lived long 
 enough to leave some memorials of his genius, but, alas ! not long enough 
 for our fame or for his own. 
 
 " For Lycidas is dead, dead ere Irs prime — 
 Young Lycidas — and hath not left his peer!" 
 
 That night was one of the Nodes Atticse or Amhrosianse., if you choose so 
 to name them, which signalized the early history of this college. Dr. 
 Caldwell was a good man and a wise man ; but I wonder he did not see, 
 that the olympic games of Greece had not a greater attraction for that 
 sprightly people, than such night adventures have for some freshmen — 
 sophomores — ^juniors — shall I go on? and that for the chance of such a 
 race as this, many a wild collegian would run all the risk of suspension, 
 three nights of every week 
 
 And here, perhaps, it will not be offensive to introduce, among my rem- 
 iniscences, the shadow of a reminiscence, whieh rests like a jtenumhra 
 among the more distinct impressions on the tablet of my memory. It re- 
 lates to a man who has long borne a conspicuous and honorable part 
 among the editors of our country — one of the surviving Titans, who has 
 planted his battery not five miles from the throne of Jove, and hurled 
 many a thirty-two pounder at the whitehouse and at the capitol. Should 
 this page chance to meet his eye, and should he recognize in it a faint 
 nucleus of fact, he will laugh at a college legend which always hands down 
 
20 
 
 a mucli better story than it received. President Caldwell once caught 
 some boys in mischief; among the rest he descried one on the top of the 
 college, fastening a rjoo'iG to the very ridge of the roof. '■'■ Ah ! J oseph, 
 Joseph," said he " I suppose thou art fixing up that poor bird there, as an 
 emblem of thyself." Perhaps that severe cut from his teacher may have 
 goaded the youthful truant to throw away the yoose forever afterwards, re- 
 serving only a qiiill wherewith to write himself into renown. I hope he 
 will forgive me for thus heralding liis exploits upon the house-tops. 
 
 The bell, too, that everlasting mischief-maker, could never be confined 
 to its legitimate utterances, as long as its notes, at dead of night, set all 
 the faculty on the '^ qui vice," and when a string, passing from it to some 
 upper window, enabled a freshman, to whom it was a novelty, to create 
 mysterious music, as if gotten up by the spirits of the air. But since the 
 faculty have put it upon the ground that sometimes little boys come here 
 just after their mothers have taken the rattles from about their necks and 
 that they must be amused a while with some noise as a substitute, the 
 officers indulge such in bell-ringing until they have got their fill, and then 
 the nuisance is abated. 
 
 As for myself, being brought up in the Caldwellian school, I once did 
 try my hand at a night adventure, and sallied forth to catch a party of 
 revellers in the woods. I came upon them by surprise and captured sev- 
 eral, but in pursuing one, I got hung in a grape vine, which cured me of 
 pursuing students at night. 
 
 There was one other adventure, however, in which j9a?'s magni fid. As 
 it is characteristic of the times, I will beg pardon for relating it. The two 
 societies, as I have already intimated, were then often at dagger's points 
 with each other, and were sometimes^in danger of a general engagement. 
 Like all young things, they easily got angry, and had no objections to 
 a fight, while older animals grow wiser, and find peace much more com- 
 fortable and much more dignified than war. (I beg pardon of the august 
 crowned heads that are now butting each other on the plains of Italy*.) 
 On one occasion the champions of the respective bodies came into collision 
 and had a desperate fight, in which one of them, much more of a bully 
 than the other, got his antagonist down and beat him most dreadfully, 
 though I never heard that h-o. gouged him. It was a kind of melee, several 
 being engaged on both sides. Dr CaldAj^ell thought it absolutely necessa- 
 ry to adopt vigorous measures to put a stop to such outrages. It appeared 
 that the bully had provoked the fight, and was most to blame. So a writ 
 
 * That old commentator on the Bible, Matthew Henry, as full^of wit as of 
 wisdom, remarks that the prophets very fitly represent the great conquerors 
 of the earth, under the emblems of lions, leopards, bears, rams, he-goats, &c. 
 If so, oiir allusion in the text is not inapposite, and the world need not care 
 much Avhich has the hardest head, the ram or the he-goat. 
 
21 
 
 was taken out to arrest him and carry him to Hillsboro', where the suj^e- 
 rior court was then sitting. The President's jwsse comitatis was summon- 
 ed to take him. The house where he secreted himself was surrounded 
 the besieged leaped out upon the shed, and attempted to jump down; but 
 being headed on all sides, he surrendered at discretion, /was one of the 
 guard to Hillsboro.' It was a rainy night, the prisoner purposely kept 
 his horse in a walk, that we might not bring him into town at night as a. 
 guarded criminal. So we rode up at breakfast time, like a party of trav- 
 elers, to the hotel, where the judge and prosecuting officer, and a crowd 
 of people were standing. Our mittimus was examined, when lo and be- 
 hold ! the justice of the peace who issued it, had, either accidentally or 
 on purpose, left out of the writ the initials of his office "J. P.," and with- 
 out those magic letters, it was as harmless as a lion with his head cut off. 
 So the whole proceeding was quashed, the prisoner discharged, the expe- 
 dition covered with ridicule, and the escort went home pretty well sick 
 of sheriff's business. I beg you, gentlemen in authority here, if you ever 
 have a like occasion, remember the letters J. P. 
 
 While we are passing over certain early incidents of Dr. Caldwell's ad- 
 ministration, before I leave the subject, the audience will no doubt in- 
 dulge me in here introducing a brief notice of one of his most valued col- 
 leagues and coadjutors, the late lamented Dr. Mitchell. Here let us pause 
 to drop a tear to the memory of this martyr of science. He fell a victim 
 to too great self-reliance. This trait in his character, owing no doubt, in 
 a considerable degree to constitutional temperament, was stimulated and 
 confirmed by a New England education, in which youth are seldom in- 
 dulged in that life of ease and indolence so common and so pernicious 
 among ourselves ; but are early thrown upon their own enterprise, and in- 
 vention, and industry, for providing their future livelihood. This char- 
 acteristic of that part of our country, is remarkably calculated to develop 
 all the latent energ'cs within a youth, whether for good or for evil — a 
 stern necessity '' to do or die" — to swim or sink, which may produce a 
 a Franklin and a Webster, or peradventure a Benedict Arnold — like the 
 fierce sun of the tropics, which concocts at once the aromatic gums and 
 the deadly poisons. 
 
 This self-reliance of our regretted friend, was conspicuous from his first 
 appearance among us. It carried him as a botanist, over almost every 
 hill and meadow, and into every nook and corner of our extensive State, 
 alone and through all weathers; and led him, as a geologist, to scale 
 every mountain and penetrate every cavern, where nature might promise 
 spoils to philosophic curiosity. While youth remained, he escaped 
 unharmed from the perils into which his adventurous spirit pushed him; 
 but, like !Miio, the famous athlete oi Crotono, he forgot that he was 
 
growing old, and was lured to his death by too great confidence in that 
 strength and activity on which he had so often relied with safety. At 
 his age and with his high position as a savant, he was entitled to an 
 escort. He ought not to have been seen venturing alone and unassisted 
 among precipitous cliffs, to make good North-Carolina's claim to the 
 Chimborazo of the Alleganies. He ought to have had a retinue of 
 enthusiastic pupils at his heels, Qinagna comitante caterva,') carrying his 
 chiiin and his compass, and his barometer, and his tent and traveling 
 chest. And I have no doubt he might have enlisted such a corps of his 
 pupils had he desired and requested it. But his self-reliance seemed to 
 scorn all help, as a confession of incapacity and dep.endance. A bivouac 
 in a mountain gorge, alone and far from the haunts of men, had 
 something in it inviting to his bold and inquisitive genius. I think I 
 have heard him say, that in one of his visits to the same mountainous 
 region, he had been drenched to the skin by a thunder-storm, and had 
 laid down and slept in his wet clothes, till the morning. That such a 
 man would fall prematurely by his excessive spirit of adventure, was 
 naturally to have been apprehended, and we might have justly cautioned 
 him, in the language of Andromache : 
 
 " Too daring man, ah! whither Avoiildst thou run, 
 
 Ah ! too forgetful of thy wife and son ; 
 
 For sure such courage length of life denies, 
 
 And thou must fall, thy virtue's sacrifice!" 
 
 I have such an opinion of my late friend's undaunted spirit of adven- 
 ture, that I believe, if he had been one of the scientific corps who 
 accompanied Napoleon in his expedition to Egypt, and if that general 
 had summoned them all before him and said : " I want a man who will go 
 .to the biggest of the pyramids, find its secret entrance, explore, lamp in 
 ■'hand, its dark winding galleries, search its inmost penetralia and bring 
 •out, if to be found, the sarcophagus of Cheops himself" — I believe that 
 Elisha Mitchell would have stept forth and Said: "I'll try it." He 
 would have been the very man to have joined Dr. Kane in his Arctic 
 •expedition. That daring navigator pushed his investigations to latitude 
 82° 30', the farthest hyperborian point ever reached by the foot of science, 
 .and laid down the coast to within less than 8° of the pole. But if 
 Mitchell had been along with him and Dr. Kane had detached him on 
 ,an exploring trip, I should not have wondered if the pole itself had been 
 •discovered, and Mitchell had tied his boat to the axis of the earth! 
 Shade of my departed companion! foi'give this sportive ebullition to 
 which I have been tempted by the recollection of thine, own jocose tem- 
 per and playful spirit. How often, when I have gone to thee, gloomy 
 and fretted by some transient irritation, has thy contagious hilarity and 
 sunshiny face dispelled the cloud from my brow and the spleen from my 
 
temper, and I felt the trutli of that inspired sentiment: ''As iron 
 sliarpeneth iron, so does a man sharpen the countenance of his friend." 
 Of such a man might be said, in the beautif il hmguage of Dr. Johnson, 
 that " his death has eclipsed the gaiety of his country and impoverished 
 the general stock of harmless pleasure," as well as of valuable science. 
 
 But, brothers of the alumni, I could not excuse myself, and I should 
 but ill perform the duty committed to me this day, if I devoted the 
 whole of this address to amusing or mournful reminiscences of the past. 
 I wish to say something before I sit down, which will be profitable for 
 the future. It may be allowable, on a* joyous anniversary like the 
 present, to entertain ourselves and our audience, with some pictures of 
 college life, half a century ago. But it becomes us as educated men, who 
 have gone through the perils and who have reaped the fruits of a colle- 
 giate career, to direct our thoughts to the great question how these perils 
 may be encountered and these advantages secured with the least admix- 
 ture of evil. As lovers of our common country — as North-Carolinians, 
 ambitious of the honor of our State — as men bound to feel for those 
 many parents who trust to these walls their dearest treasure — their sons, 
 that are to bless or to blast their homesteads — we ought to make it a 
 subject of anxious thought, how to prevent a great college from being a 
 great calamity. As men of reflection and humanity, we must have been 
 often saddened by observing the vast amount of icaste in human life, 
 human talent and human happiness, which the spectacle of our colleges 
 presents. That there is a strong tendency, when large numbers of young 
 men are congregated together, and live to themselves, with very little 
 intermixture with general society, to become dissipated, riotous and 
 lawless, the history of all colleges proves, both in this country and in 
 Europe. The two universities of England have been long famous as the 
 abodes of licentiousness of all kinds. Mr. Griscom, one of the most 
 respectable and intelligent citizens of New Yo^rk, visited Oxford about 
 forty years ago, and after witnessing a disgraceful scene enacted by a 
 party of Students at the hotel* makes the following reflections : " Alas 1 
 
 * " Of the morality of some of the collegians, I had a most unfavorable speci- 
 men. Four or five of tliein came in the evening, to the inn where I had taken 
 up my quarters, in the principal street in the town. They entered the coffee 
 room, where two or three travellers and myself were sitting engaged in con- 
 versation. And after surveying us and the room for sometime, they went out 
 but shortly after returned, seated themselves in one of the recesses into which 
 the room was divided, and ordered supper and drink. Their conversation 
 soon assumed a very free cast, and eventually took such a latitude as, I should 
 suppose, would set all Billingsgate at defiance. They abused the waiter, broke 
 a number of things, tore the curtains that enclosed the recesses — staid till near 
 twelve o'clock, and then went off, thoroughly soaked with wine, brandy and 
 hot toddy. I was told the next morning, that two of them were noblemen." 
 (A very different thing from noble men.) — Griscom's Year in Europe, vol. L 
 pp. GO, Gl. 
 
24 
 
 for such au education as tlils. What can Latin and Greek and all the 
 store of learning and science have to make amends in an hour of retri- 
 bution, for a depraved heart and an understanding debased by such 
 vicious indulgence. I cannot but cherish the hope that this incident 
 does not furnish a fair specimen of the morals of the students. It will 
 doubtless happen, that in so large a number as that here collected, in the 
 various colleges, many will bring with them habits extremely unfavorable 
 to morality and subordination. But from the information derived from 
 my guide, who was a moderate man, and certainly well informed with 
 respect to the habits of the pl'ace, and from the observations which forced 
 themselves upon me in my walks through the streets and gardens, this 
 evening, I am obliged to deduce the lamentable conclusion that the 
 morals of the nation are not much benefitted by the direct influence of 
 this splendid scat of learning." And although he inclines to the opinion, 
 that the state of morals is not quite so bad at Cambridge, yet he admits it 
 to be a doubtful question, and that this is only a surmise of his own, and 
 says: "It would be a curious and interesting subject of inquiry to ascer- 
 tain, with as much accuracy as possible, the comparative morality of 
 Oxford and Cambridge, as it is admitted that in Oxford the collegiate 
 studies are directed with paramount assiduity to moral philosophy and 
 the higher range of classical learning, while in Cambridge, mathematics 
 and natural philosophy have a transcendent influence."* 
 
 What license, what scorn, what blasphemy, what atheism, must the 
 rowdies of Cambridge feel at liberty to indulge in, when they see the 
 disbanded debauchees of the camp suddenly turned into pastors, having 
 the care of souls! 
 
 This testimony relates to the state of things at those celebrated univer- 
 sities forty years ago. Have things inproved there since that date? Let 
 lis hear the testimony of Sydney Smith, one of the most distinguished 
 literati of the present century, whom none will suspect of too austere and 
 puritanical a view of the subject. In a letter written but a few years 
 ago, to one of his female correspondents, he says: "I feel for Mrs. 
 
 * There is one feature which Mr. Griscom observed at his visit to Cambridge 
 which is certainly significant, and ominous of a low state of morals. "Since 
 the late peace," says he, [this was written in 1819, soon after the anti-Napo- 
 lean armies had been disbanded,] "a great number of persons, from the army 
 and navy, have entered as students of divinity, relying on family influence fur 
 promotion, and in consequence of such influence, no inconsiderable number 
 have been promoted, and over the heads, too, of others, who have devoted many 
 years to the duties of the university. Surely no wound can be inflicted on re- 
 ligion more deep and deadly than to place a man by the mere dictum of hierar- 
 chical authority, in the station of a Christian minister, who is just reeking 
 from the camp, and who has no qualifications either of head or heart for the 
 solemn ofiice, and probably no taste for any of its accompaniments except for 
 the loaves and fishes."— To?. 2 : p. 210. 
 
25 
 
 about her son at Oxford, knowing as I do, that tte only consequences of 
 a university education are tlie growth of vice and the waste of money."* 
 
 In the German universities so far as reports have been published among 
 us, the state of morals is even worse, the frequent practice of duelling be- 
 ing added to the usual vices of college life. 
 
 To come nearer home, what has been the experience of our neighbor- 
 ing sister South Carolina? In the beginning of this century, she began to 
 awaken to the duty and the policy of providing means for the home edu- 
 cation of her sons, vrho had hitherto been educated in the Northern States 
 or in Europe. Somewhat later than we, she created a State college, and 
 endowed it with that enlightened liberality worthy of the intelligence and 
 opulence of her leading men. But, alas ! the history of that college 
 proves how useless it is to make all these magnificent preparations of fac- 
 ulty, of library, of apparatus and of buildings, if there are not materials 
 enough of the right kind out of which to make students — if the young- 
 men of the country are reared up in ease, idleness and luxury, and know 
 that they are rich enough to do without an education. "What is the usual 
 course with such young men? They go to college; they there find num- 
 bers of idlers like themselves, they find study irksome and disgusting, 
 pleasure spreads out her seductions before them, they are indulged with 
 plenty of money, and habits of ruinous dissipation follow tis the necessary 
 results. If they are sent home, what penalty there awaits them ? A horse 
 a gun, a dog, fine clothes, and the ladies ! Who would immure himself 
 in a college cell with such companions as Thucydides and his crabbed 
 Greek, or Loomis' Differential and Integral Calculus, when by going 
 down street and '■' getting up a row," he can be sent home to so much 
 pleasanter employment and company ? The result of South Carolina's 
 experiment upon a college, we have from authority the most unsuspicious 
 and authentic. One of the most respectable alumni, one of the oldest 
 judges on the bench of that State has given his testimony, which has 
 been copied into most of the newspapers of the land. "I have known 
 that iustitution," says Judge O'Neall, "intimately since 1811, when I 
 first entered its walls, and I have no hesitation in saying that one 
 fourth of its students have been affected injuriously or destroyed by intox- 
 icating drinks. Indeed I fully believe that one fourth of its graduates 
 sleep in drunkards' graves." He goes on to say, however, that " notwith- 
 standing this dread scourge. South Carolina college has accomplished an 
 immense amount of good," &c. A valuable lesson was learned from the 
 results of the Cooper administration of that institution. Dr. Thomas 
 Cooper was called to the presidency from his high reputation as a man of 
 science and general learning, and perhajis with some reference to his or- 
 
 ""^ifc, vol. 2 : p. 402. 
 
26 
 
 thodoxy on political questions, then deeply agitating tliat State. It would 
 liave been hard to find a man of more multifarious learning. He was a 
 lawyer, a statesman, a physician, a philosopher, natural and moral, and 
 somewhat even of a theologian ; but withal he was an infidel, an atheist. 
 And the college soon took tlic type of its head. Infidelity and irreligion 
 took possession of the seat and centre of knowlege, and therefore soon be- 
 came rife through the State. A State college is the eye of the body politic, 
 and " if the eye be evil the whole body shall be full of darkness." The 
 college was broken down by dissipation and disorder ; parents lost all 
 confidence, and durst not expose their sons to the double danger of infidel 
 principles and profligate example. At length Gov. McDuffie in his mes- 
 sage to the legislature, was obliged to report the State college as a failure; 
 and though an infidel himself, he candidly admitted that the prevalence 
 of infidel sentiments had destroyed the public confidence and reduced the 
 college to its present low condition, and he therefore advised a reorganiza- 
 tion of the faculty and a new trial for success under difi"erent auspices. 
 Accordingly three of the foremost men in the State for talents and reli- 
 gious character, were installed as president and professors, and a special 
 professorship was created of Christian Evidences. Very soon the college 
 regained its former patronage, religion was respected, the gospel powerful- 
 ly preached twice every Sunday in the college chapel, and infidelity, for- 
 merly triumphant and open-mouthed, was now silent and humbled, if not 
 extinct. Here was an experiment whose fruits I trust will be permanent- 
 ly and extensively useful, namely : that a literary institution, without the 
 religious element to leaven the mass, will not be supported by the people 
 of this country. 
 
 The University of Virgii^a had to go through the same experience. It 
 was the child of Mr. Jefi'erson, whose infidelity was well known and had 
 a contagious influence on the leading public men of the State. No pro- 
 vision was made for any religious worship or religious instruction in the 
 university. The institution for several of the first years of its existence 
 had a bad name for vice and irreligion — the religious public mourned and 
 complained that the State university founded and supported by the votes 
 and the treasure of the commonwealth^ for the education of the sons of 
 the commonwealth, should ignore Christianity, and be given up to anti- 
 christian influences. This was the apparent design, by leaving out reli- 
 gion entirely in the course of instruction and in the appointment of officers. 
 To do Mr. Jefferson justice, this seems not to have been in his contempla- 
 tion. Unbeliever as he was, himself, he was too shrewd a politician and 
 too well acquainted with the people of this country, to attempt a literary 
 establishment among us, having none of the moral and popular influences 
 of Christianity. His idea was this, as I learned from his own lips, when 
 
27 
 
 I paid a visit to Monticello, in 1823, only three years before his death, 
 and but a short, time before the university went into operation. He 
 thought that the established American principle of non-interference in re- 
 ligious matters, and the division of our people into different sects, render- 
 ed it improper and impracticable to incorporate in the plan of the univer- 
 sity any provision for the teaching of religion. But it was announced 
 publicly, that all the religious bodies were authorized and encourao-ed 
 to establish, at the seat of the university, any foundations and lectureships 
 that they might deem expedient, and they were promised the free use of 
 the library and of the lectures of the academical department. This seems 
 to vindicate Mr. Jefferson on this point. But as the suggestion above 
 mentioned was not adopted by the various religious denominations, after a 
 few years' experiment, the absence of Christianity was proved to be a se- 
 rious evil, and disreputable to the university. So the faculty and students 
 by common consent, determined to call a chaplain to perform the ordinary 
 religious services, and that they might obviate the jealousy of religious 
 sects, the chaplain was to be chosen from the prevalent religious 
 bodies, in rotation. This, I believe, has worked well, and to the satisfac- 
 tion of all. The present arrangements also give to all ministers and can- 
 didates for the ministry, the privilege of attending gratuitously the lec- 
 tures of the professors, which, it would seem, ought to appease all alarms 
 and silence all complaints. 
 
 The College of which we boast ourselves to be sons, was founded in an 
 era most dark an inauspicious to religion — the close of the last and the 
 beginning of the present century. Our country had just emerged from 
 a long, distressing war, and it is well known that war has a hardening ef- 
 fect upon the minds of men, familiarizing them with blood and death, and 
 rendering them skeptical and indifferent in matters relating to a 'future 
 world. To this add the overshadowing influence of France. The splen- 
 dor of her philosophers and political economists had then attracted the ad- 
 miration of the world ; her powerfu.1 fellowship in arms had helped us 
 happily through our struggle for liberty, and then her imitation of us in 
 bursting her own shackles, — all these ties had bound us to her destinies 
 with an enthusiasm and self-sacrifice which had well nigh engulphed us in 
 the same devouring whirlpool that finally swallowed up her first republic. 
 She reciprocated all our enthusiasm, and received our Franklin in Paris 
 with the honors of a demi-god, condensing into one pregnant Latin hex- 
 ameter his two greatest exploits — the snatching of lightning from heaveu, 
 and the sceptre from tyrants : 
 
 " Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrum que tyrannis."* 
 
 -X- Target the famous political economist, was the author of this beautiful 
 eulogium. 
 
28 
 
 Unliappily wten France overturned the throne and the Bastile, she 
 overturned, with the same convulsive throes, the temple of God, and set 
 up as her only object of worship, the goddess Liberty — liberty not only 
 from the chains of despots, butTrom all belief in future responsibility. 
 This portentous atheism spread its disastrous influence over most of our 
 public men, and hence the works of Voltaire and his royal patron, 
 Frederick of Prussia, of Rousseau, Helvetius, Bolingbroke, Hume, Gibbon 
 and Paine, were found in the libraries of our principal families, however 
 small these libraries were. Some of these, presented by trustees and 
 others, were among the most conspicuous books in our university and 
 society libraries, in their early beginnings. As the coch was the nation- 
 al emblem of France, it is hardly vulgar to quote here our homely 
 proverb : " As the old cock crows the young one learns." Our first 
 professors and students caught the Gallic infection; and Dr. Caldwell 
 among his earliest difficulties, had to struggle with infidelity in the 
 faculty and infidelity among the students; and hence, among his sermons 
 of that date, many will be found in refutation of objections against 
 Christianity. The same difficulties Dr. Dwight was contending with at 
 Yale college, to the presidency of which he was called a few years before 
 this dat«. From the commencement of Dr. Caldwell's administration the 
 christian religion has been recognised and taught in this institution, and 
 its laws have required the students to attend such religious services as 
 they were called to by the professors. Since that tiuie the growth of the 
 several ecclesiastical bodies, has made it right and important to consult 
 their wishes by representation in the academic corps; and it would 
 seem that the best practicable plan has been fallen on to allay sectarian 
 jealousy, and to give Christianity such prominence in our collegiate 
 system, as to impress our undergraduates with the conviction that it is 
 venerated as of divine origin, and as the religion of our country. 
 
 But after all this public provision for the maintenance of religious 
 influence and of moral habits, it is a lamentable fact that colleges will 
 nourish within their bosom, a large amount of vicious dissipation, idleness 
 and profusion. The two great obstacles to government and incentives to 
 disorder are the congregation of large numbers of youth into houses by 
 themselves, and the use of intoxicating drinks. Whether we have not 
 made a mistake in thus isolating the students from family society, and 
 crowding them together in such numbers under one roof, may admit of 
 painful doubt. Judge O'Neall, whom I quoted a little while ago, gives 
 it as his decided conviction, that dormitories ought to be done away with, 
 and the students distributed among respectable families. Dr James W. 
 Alexander^ of New York, one of the first men of this country, an alum- 
 nus of Princeton, and for a long time a professor there^ in a letter 
 
29 
 
 received from him a few years since, says : " Of all absurd things in the 
 world, one of the most absurd is to put a great number of boys together, 
 in a large building, to keep house by themselves." Tbis is the first 
 difficulty, but whether the plan proposed as a remedy would succeed 
 better has not, I believe, been put to the test. ^Ye cannot therefore say 
 of the veciipe : 23robatum est. The other difficulty, the use of intoxicating 
 liquors, is the gigantic evil of colleges, and leads all reflecting persons, as 
 well as Mr. G-riscom, sometimes to doubt whether all the benefits of 
 public education are not outweighed by this enormous mischief to the 
 morals and happiness of our families. War is, while it lasts, perhaps the 
 most terrific calamity with which our race is scourged. Pestilence too, 
 now and then, poisons the common element we all do breathe, and more 
 than decimates our cities. These evils, however, are intermittent. They 
 leave long intervals of repose and healthful enjoyment. But intemper- 
 ance, begun in youth and otten continued and aggravated through tedious 
 years of shame and sorrow, in so many families — this, this, is the running 
 ulcer of our social body; this is the perennial, fetid, stygian flood, that is 
 circling round and round the land, and pouring its poisonous tide into 
 our sacred homes. This it is which causes more human hearts to ache 
 and more human faces to blush than any other cause. In vain have been 
 all your temperance societies. In vain your temperance lectures have 
 been sent through the length of the land — gifted with tragic powers to 
 make the public weep over the horrors of drunkenness, and with comic 
 powers to make the drunkard the laughing stock of the world. In vain 
 have been all these schemes to abate the nuisance. Intemperance has 
 grown under all these appliances, like the cancer spreading under the 
 surgeon's knife, or the Hydra multiplying its heads under the club of 
 
 Hercules. 
 
 Alas ! Leviathan is not thus tamed ; 
 Laughed at he laughs again, and stricken hard, 
 Turns to the stroke his adamantine scales, 
 That fear no discipline from human hands. 
 
 And if this disease is so pernicious in its sporadic form, turning a home 
 hei'e and a home there into a habitation of wretchedness, what must it be 
 when concentrated in a public institution, a multitude countenancing and 
 stimulating each other, ^'despising the shame," and by their united strength 
 breaking down every barrier ! A college thus tainted is like our great 
 western river, with all its swollen affluents, bursting all the embankments, 
 and carrying terror, and devastation, and malaria over the fruitful valley 
 which it ought to adorn and fertilize. For this single vice is at the root 
 of all collegiate disturbances and delinquencies. Ofe-very drinking stu- 
 dent may be said what was said of Judas Iscariot : " With the soj) featau 
 entered into him." Hence all the counsels of educators^ all the ingenui- 
 
so 
 
 ty of physicians, all the discoveries of chemistry, all the wisdom and pow- 
 er of legislative bodies, should be put in requisition to contend with this 
 portentous mischief. And he who shall discover a cure or even an alle- 
 viation of this curse of humanity, will deserve a monument higher and 
 more enduring than the pyramids, and be entitled to a gratitude deeper 
 and wider than that accorded to Dr. Jenner, who has relieved the world 
 of the terrors of small pox. Premiums are offered for all improvements 
 in the industrial and economical arts, and for the best essays on all moral 
 subjects; but the richest premium will he deserve, who, by some chymic 
 art, shall make young collegians loathe intoxicating drinks, or by some 
 happy improvement in political economy, shall drive ardent spirits out of 
 the land as an article of manufacture or of commerce. The might of man 
 has failed; may we not appeal to the softer but more potent influence of 
 tcomanf Will not the ladies, themselves safe and superior to this infirmi- 
 ty, come to the rescue of our powerless sex ? We are called the stronger 
 .sex and they the weaker : but as to temptations to vice they are the stron- 
 ger and we the weaker sex. I have the same opinion of them that Lord 
 Chatham had of the English soldiers : " They can achieve anything but 
 impossibilities." * They are not good at making large bargains, I admit, 
 as is proved by the price they have agreed to give for Mt. Vernon; but 
 even there, the bargain is to their credit, showing that they estimate the 
 "value received," not in the worth of the land, but in the testimony of 
 national gratitude and in sending an embassador around the land to teach 
 in honied accents, the grandest lesson this family of nations ca^ learn, 
 namely : by loving their common father, to love and cherish the united 
 republic which he lived and labored and suffered to establish. Let those 
 Avho have entered with so much zeal into this national '' labor of love " 
 now join their hearts in another, touching more nearly the happiness of 
 their country and of the world. Let them proclaim with their sovereign 
 voice, from one end of the continent to the other, that their smiles and 
 their hands are the prize oisuhrietij alone. From all their lips let there be 
 iheard the general chorus : 
 
 Young men, young men who love your drink, 
 Your bark of hope and bliss must sink ; 
 We'll never trust with you our life — 
 You cannot, shall not have a wife. 
 
 I venture with diffidence to make the following suggestions. It seems 
 hopeless to put a stop to the use of all stimulating drinks. All nations 
 have used them, and God constituted wine with corn as a part of his spe- 
 cial gifts to his people, in the Holy Land. Thus the inspired writer says: 
 
 "■^The French have a proverb that truly expresses the power of woman: 
 "Les femmes pouvent tout, parcequ'elles gouvcrneut les personnes qui 
 ffouvernent tout." 
 
31 
 
 " He causefh tie grass to grow for the cattle and herb for the service of 
 man, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face 
 to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart." Here you find 
 wine mentioned like grass and herb, and oil, and bread, as gifts equally 
 expressive of the kindness of Heaven. What God gives as a tonic and 
 stimulant, along with the nutriment of man, cannot, if soberly and pru- 
 dently used, be hurtful either to body or mind. In conformity with these 
 providential bestowments of the old dispensation, we find the Saviour, in 
 the New Testament, using wine at his meals, though it exposed him to the 
 slander of being a wine-bibber — turning water into wine for the use of the 
 guests, at a marriage banquet, and appointing wine to be used at his own 
 sacred supper. Now I by no means intend it to be understood that be- 
 cause in that day and country the fermented juice of the grape was a na- 
 tive product and a licensed beverage, therefore the adulterous and poison- 
 ous mixtures in use among us are lawful and expedient; nor would I be 
 understood as saying that the banishment of even pure loine would be be- 
 yond the right and duty of college authorities, any more than it would be 
 beyond their right to prohibit a certain kind of food, if it was found that that 
 kind of food led generally to gluttony and sickness. Besides, in modern 
 times so many other beverages have been introduced, less dangerous and 
 perhaps more nutritious, that we have less reason to use the wine of the 
 shops, which is anything else but the juice of the grape. But what I am 
 now aiming at is this : to inquire whether we could not, by introducing 
 the vine among our agricultural products, make within ourselves a domes- 
 tic beverage, safe and pleasant, and drive out the pestiferous liquors, for- 
 eign and home made, which are now the bane of our land. An enlighten- 
 ed foreigner from Grermany, Mr. Schweinitz, who was honored with a seat 
 in the board of trustees, and who used sometimes to visit this place, de- 
 clared that this locality where we now are, was the very country for the 
 grape and the manufacture of wine. Why should not our enlightened 
 and more wealthy farmers, who can afford to make the experiment, instead 
 of forever moving round in the same circle of crops, (corn, wheat, cotton, 
 tobacco,) venture upon the culture of the grape and an experiment in 
 wine, at first on a small scale? * If our country should be found capable of 
 producing light wines harmless as a common drink, it might have a 
 greater effect in promoting temperance than the effort at total abstinence. 
 
 *I annex the following recent document on this subject: 
 
 WixE IX Ohio. — An experienced writer who has one of the best vineyards 
 in Hamilton county, says that four hundred gallons of wine per acre may he 
 safely depended upon this year, as the product of the grape croj"). The 
 fermented juice of the grape readily commands, when new, an average of 
 SI 25 per gallon. At the above rate the crop will yield §500 per acre-about 
 the most profitable crop that is produced in this country. 
 
32 
 
 It is admitted that tlie people of France are in general temperate, though 
 the use of wine is universal, and that it is a rare thing to see a drunken 
 man in that country. Mr. Hentz, formerly professor of French in this 
 college, who spent his early life in Paris, used to say that he never saw a 
 drunken man till he was seventeen years of age, and that he was at a loss 
 to account for the singularity of his behavior, ascribing it to a derange- 
 ment. This superior sobriety of that light, and giddy, and impetuous 
 nation, cannot be attributed to any moral cause, amd is probably due to 
 the fact that a cheap and innocuous beverage is accessible to every body. 
 In the absence of wine from our country, might not some other innooent 
 liquors be brought into use — beer, mead, cider, raspberry wine, &c.? At 
 Princeton, when I was there in 1813, malt beer was a part of the college 
 dinner j and in Yale college, it was allowed as a perquisite to an indigent 
 student, to sell liquors of that kind to the students ; whether it was aban- 
 doned at both of those great institutions, as leading to injurious consequen- 
 ces, I never heard. I throw out these suggestions with some apprehen- 
 sion lest a bad use may be made of them, but the disease is so desperate 
 it warrants bold experiments. From long thought and experience and 
 from the high authorities I have quoted, I have been led to form the the- 
 ory of a college, of which if my audience will have patience with me I will 
 give them a brief outline. It is impracticable, to be sure, in an old coun- 
 try, and where all the expenditures of buildings have been already incur- 
 red. But I cannot help desiring to avail myself of so large an audience 
 to present my thoughts on this subject for the consideration of an enlight- 
 ened public. The generous donations by Congress of extensive lands for 
 educational purposes in our new States, would have furnished, and in 
 some may yet furnish most favorable opportunities and facilities for car- 
 rying such a plan into execution : Let a tract of one or more square 
 miles, healthy and beautiful in its aspect, and having an abundance of fine 
 water, be selected as the location. Let this territory remain, in perj)etit- 
 wn, the property of the trustees ; let not a foot of it be sold. Let a village 
 be laid out in convenient lots, and let respectable families be invited to 
 lease them, for a term of years, and put up suitable houses, obligating 
 themselves to take a certain number of boarders, and to keep no intoxica- 
 ting dripks, under penalty of ejectment. This would give the trustees 
 a control over the population, and enable them to exclude all improper in- 
 habitants. The only public buildings then required would be houses for 
 professors and public rooms for lectures, library and apparatus j and the 
 large sums heretofore expended in providing dormitories would be saved 
 for endowing professorships and scholarships, and procuring library and 
 apparatus. This plan would promise to obviate the disturbances incident 
 to a steward's table, the disorders generated by having large numbers in 
 
 
33 
 
 one liouse^and would if settlers of the right sort could be obtained, promote 
 gentility of manners by intercourse with private families, and in case of 
 sickness secure requisite quiet, comfort and attendance. 
 
 Such is the theory, and a fair vision it affords ; but I am distrustful of all 
 theories, and I should like to know whether there is anywhere an institution 
 on this plan, and how it works. Favorers of things as they are^ and conser- 
 vatives suspicious of innovations, I confess may overcast this fair vision with 
 forebodings of ills still greater than the present. A prophet less hopeful and 
 perhaps more sagacious than I, may descry looming in the dim future visions 
 of landlords with broken heads for informing the faculty that, last night, there 
 was a card and wine party up stairs — visions of enamored students and love- 
 sick daughters in every boarding house; Corydon sighing for Chloe, and 
 Chloe sighing, not for Corydon, but for Daphnis — then dark spectres of Co- 
 rydon, and Daphnis in deadly strife — Amyntas 
 
 " Sporting with Amaryllis in the shade, 
 Or with the tangles of Neara's hair,"* 
 
 instead of with his Demosthenes and Plato, — the scene winding up with five 
 matches on commencement night between so many graduates and so many 
 daughters of their respective landlords. Alas ! I should have to insert 
 among the conditions of my Utopian colony that the landlords should have 
 no daughters, or should send them all off to school. These dark possibilities 
 clouding my fairy vision, will I fear, prevent its ever being realized, and in- 
 duce the old fogies to fold their arms in scornful tranquility, saying : " All 
 the difference between the old plan and the new one will be, that instead of 
 having one JEtna, with now and then a ^' great blow-out and have done with 
 it," you will have fifty little smithies, with the roar of the bellows, the clang- 
 ing of the anvil and the showers of sparks forever annoying you." So we 
 see that on this, as on most subjects, " much might be said on both sides." 
 
 After so long an address, can I, ought I to be insensible to the flattering at- 
 tention and marks of approbation with which it has been received ? I well 
 know what has worked so mightily in my favor. Never was speaker more 
 fortunate in the temper of the house. Among the charms which according 
 to old Homer, Jove conferred upon his darling daughter, Venus, was that of 
 pJiilommeides ; she was the queen of smiles, the laughter-loving Aphrodite. 
 So the presence of the chief magistrate of the Union has made every one joy- 
 ous — it has given me a laughter-loving audience, and among them many a 
 Venus, with lambent lightnings playing about her eyes, encircled with the 
 irresistible Cestus, and with the little rogue Cupid sitting at her feet ever 
 sharpening his burning arrows on a bloody whetstone.* And if I owe an 
 
 *Milton's Lucidas. 
 
 f "Ridet Venus, ferus et Cupido, 
 Semper ardentes, acuens sagittas, 
 Cote cruenta." — Hor. 
 
34 
 
 apology to my kind and indulgent audience for tlie parti-colored character of 
 this address, this motley mixture of the serious and the ludicrous, here is my 
 defence : Such is life, in which shade and sunshine chase each other over 
 the plain — in which joy and sorrow rapidly alternate in our hearts — in which 
 smiles often shine through our tears and dry them up — and again tears start 
 forth and extiaguish the light of our smiles. Such is life, and such did 
 Shakspeare, the greatest painter of life, represent it. His pictures of man 
 are neither unmixed tragedies nor unmixed comedies, but tragi-comedies. 
 Such alternations seem to be our Creator's design. 
 
 The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife. 
 Give all the strength and color of our life. 
 
 Sorrow in advance makes the arrival of gladness more glad, and sorrow 
 
 apprehended in the future chastises and tempers the transports of present 
 
 pleasure, and mingles all our rejoicings with salutary trembling. 
 
 Alas ! by some degree of wo, 
 
 We every bliss must gain ; 
 The heart can ne'er a transport know, 
 
 That never knew a pain. 
 
 And yet something whispers me that the retrospect I have taken ought to 
 have inspired a more serious strain. Of the long line of alumni with whom 
 I have been contemporary, how few survive ! 
 
 Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto. 
 Of seven eminent men with whom I have had the honor to cooperate as 
 professor in this institution, six have now passed off from the stage of action. 
 Caldwell, Hentz, Mitchell, Andrews, Anderson and Olmsted are no more. 
 Their accents which once contributed to enlighten aad adorn our state, are 
 now hushed in the voiceless grave, and perhaps ere another anniversary re- 
 volves around, and brings you together again, the two who yet remain will be 
 gathered with those who have gone before them. To one who looks back 
 fifty or sixty years, what a shadow is man ! how fleeting, how trifling do seem 
 all his interests and schemes, his hopes and his fears ! The thought extorted 
 a sigh even from a pagan moralist : 
 
 "0! curas hominum ! 0! quantum est in rebus inane."* 
 How fading the honors of earth, how empty the applause of men ! But 
 happy, thrice happy we, that this fading pageant is not all, — that our death- 
 less souls never satisfied with the limited and transient, and always reaching 
 after something illimitable and infinite, shall, if puried by religion enter up- 
 on a state where all our companions and joy shall be perfect and unchangea- 
 ble: 
 
 Where Time, and Pain, and Chance and Death expire ; 
 
 Where momentary ages are no more ; 
 
 Where seraphs gather immortality, 
 
 On Life's fair tree, fast by the throne of God. 
 
 *Persius. 
 

 
y