YALE UNIVERSITY
DEC 4 192S
LIBRA-RY.

FEAI!TK E. KEENOOHAI^.

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READ BEFOBE

THE MONDAY EVENING CLUB

PITTSFIELD, MASS.

It is a well remembered circumstance by the
people of Pittsfield that a fairer day never wore
over the town, than Friday, the 26*'^ September,
1884, the day on which Frank E. Keenochan died.
Some, whose hearts were with their poor friend, and
yet felt the perfection of the day, Said it seemed
as if Nature, so great and calm, was tantalizing
our sorrow- stricken and transitory mortality; while
others, who saw in the day itself a resemblance to
the character of him who was then dying, declared
that nothing could be in more harmony.
However all this may have been, the day began
and ended in purple and autumnal glory. The
early riser saw its flaming morning sky, and the dew
sparkling on the tips of the drooping elm leaves, and
at midday, by which time it was generally known
that the wound was fatal, (for he had accidentally

shot himself through and through about 3 A. M.,
having been aroused by a noise that he supposed
was made by some burglars), and that he was then
struggling with death on his bed, and the sad news
had traversed the streets and flown out into the
country with the speed of a black and flying cloud,
— at midda}?', the winds were at peace, the sunshine
fell dreamily down through the elms in the park,
the doves basked in the sun on the roofs, and away
out of town a faint blue haze hung over tlie fields.
It was such a day as makes men long for the
country and the outer world, and on which few
long for or wish to exchange this for even a better
world — Peace, peace was abroad. When the sun
was about an hour high above West Mountain he
died ; and methinks the beautiful earthly vision
rested long in his eyes, if he looked back, and so
well did he love some in this world, I am sure he
did — if he looked back as he left it, mounting
heavenward, it rested even till those open, honest
eyes fell on that other view which the accompanying
angel points out to the Christian through the gates
of Paradise.

The drama of life, in view of his character, could
not have ended more fittingly nor with a better light
on this mortal stage, since Nature never wore a
sweeter countenance on the earth or in the sky.
When the day ended the sparkling spirit of our
friend was gone, — gone like the dew that had
sparkled in the morning : and that night we all
talked about him and mourned him at our homes
in the twilight.
He who died and was thus lamented, was "Francis
Edward Kemochan, son of Joseph and Margaret
(Seymour) Kernochan" — so runs the Decennial
Record of the class of 1861, Yale College. "Born
December 12th, 1840, in the city of New York, and
prepared for college in the school of the Hon. Aaron
N. Skinner of New Haven. He graduated in June,
1861. From October following to May, 1863, he
was a student in Columbia Law School, graduating
in the latter month with the degree of LL.B.,
receiving also a prize of one hundred dollars for an
essay and examination in Municipal Law. In
November, 1863, he was appointed Notary Public
and reappointed in January, 1884. Meanwhile he

entered the office of A. R. Lawrence, Esq., and
remained there reading law and learning practice
until January, 1864, when he became connected
with the office of the Counsel of the Corporation of
New York City. In June, 1865, he went to Europe,
remaining there until February, 1866. Then he
practiced law in company with his brother, J.
Frederic Kernochan ; their office was 63 Wall street.
He was married June 27, 1866, to Miss Learned,
daughter of Edward Learned, Esq., of Pittsfield,
Mass." The above is from the official record of his class ;
and since, his life was practically wholly spent
between Yale College and Pittsfield, it will, I think,
be of interest for the Club to hear something of his
life at Yale, of which, as we all remember well, he
never was weary of talking, and we, on the other
hand, so loyally and well did he talk, never were
weary of listening to him. To hear what kind of a
student he was, what sentiments he held at that
period of his age, as given in extracts from his
essays of that time, and to hear what classmates and
professors thought of him.

First, Professor Thacher, whose ward he was
while in college ; this, as all other extracts, is taken
from letters written just after he died :
" He had unusual intellectual brightness and
ability, and he was at the same time unusually
attractive socially to his college friends. I well
remember the impression which it made upon me on
one occasion, as I made a moment's call at his room,
to observe how he, without giving offense to any one
of a considerable number of noisily talking classmates,
managed to busy himself in the main with the
preparation of his lessons. I saw that he shared by
snatches in the conversation which was going on, thus
showing that he was not impatient at the presence of
his guests. In this he was not prompted by a desire
for popularity. On the other hand I should say that
he was more indifferent to popularity than most even
of those who are easily able to take an influential
position in the community of students. What he was
really in quest of he secured, and while he was
engaged in securing it he doubtless strengthened his
character also. He took and maintained through
college a rank among the very best scholars of his

class, and what was better than scholarship, there was
no stain, nor suspicion of a stain on his character. I
am sure that if there had been such a suspicion, I
should have known it, for he stood in the relation of
a ward to me while he was an undergraduate. That
college life is to my memory a picture of what his
subsequent life was. But keen and genuine as was
his relish for social enjoyment the substance and
earnestness of his life were given to usefulness. No
man as it seems to me was ever farther from being a
dead weight to any association with which he was
brought in connection. His integrity went with him
into every field of his activity — he was thoughtfully
generous. Several years after his graduation, on
learning that a woman in poor circumstances had
applied to me for aid in collecting a considerable debt
due her from one of his classmates, he sent me the
entire sum due, simply from the promptings of charity
to the woman and regard for his college friend." His
aged friend adds with great dignity of expression :
" He has passed away into the mysterious silence of
the dead," and thus takes leave of him.
We find in the programme of his Junior Year

exercises that he delivered an oration on the Idyls of
the King. " We are all," said he, (he was then about
twenty years old), " we are all inclined to worship
empty shadows, unheeding the grand realities that
everywhere surround us. It is against this mistake
that the story of Guinevere is written. May none of
us go down to the grave feeling that we have been
'forging a life-long trouble for ourselves by taking
true for false or false for true.' " No man ever had a
clearer vision of this difference.
When he graduated he delivered an oration on
Maud ; which would seem to indicate that he not only
had a taste for the literature of Poesy, but that
Tennyson was his favorite poet. He said, at the close
of this address : " We know, everybody knows, that
there are a thousand abuses in society compared with
which war with all its attending horrors, is as nothing.
To the reformation of these abuses the poet calls us.
We who go forth to-day educated men have this task
to perform." His society life at college was in the
Delta Kappa, Delta Kappa Epsilon, and Phi Beta
Kappa Societies, and he was a Skull and Bones man.
In the published songs of the former for the class

of 1861, we find he wrote the Gaudeanius Igitur,
Lauriger Horatius, and two others, one of which is to
the air of Benny Havens. Benny Havens ! at whose
old, little tavern, with a weeping willow before the
door, in a green vale on the banks of the Hudson,
below West Point, the writer in his youth tasted the
juice of the vine with cadets of a class that ever stand
clothed in his memory as Kernochan's stood in his —
and whose faces he sees again whenever he hears this
air. But thus ends Kernochan's song :
"And when our life has run its course.
And death has come at last,
When soon to whence it drew its source
The spirit will have passed,
Oh ! then when death hangs o'er us,
Gasp forth in feeble song ;
And in our dying chorus.
The dear, dear name prolong,
Of Delta Kappa Oh !" etc.
Ofthe songs for Presentation Day, June 19, 1861,
we find that three were written by him, one of which
was the Ivy song, of which Mr. Baldwin, a classmate,
wrote: "The most touching of all our college songs,
and one which I will never forget, is the Ivy song he

wrote for the class. I asked him to write it, and he
did it in half an hour. The tune, Spanish Hymn, was
a favorite one." Here is the last verse :
" Bye and bye the last remaining
Brother here may come alone,
And with tears his glasses staining
Read the carving on the stone ;
Then may rapid recollection
Span the many years between ;
May he pray in sad affection,
Faiher, heep their memories green.''''
Methinks I can see the men that are left of his
class gathered about this Ivy next June in New
Haven, and hear their voices as they will try to sing
this song ; for their hearts will be in Pittsfield, there
on the green slope of our cemetery where he is lying.
To show with what affection and sentiment he
himself looked back on those college days, let me
read the close of an essay he read to the Monday
Evening Club, entitled. Education and American
Colleges. "At times, he revisits this hallowed home
of his happy boyhood. He meets a very few — he
misses many more of the cherished friends — of his
youth. He wanders through the old rooms, — he sits

awhile in the chapel seat, once his, ah ! long ago !
He feels the golden sunlight, filtered, as of old,
through the restless foliage of the elms" (just such
sunlight filtered through the elms of Pittsfield into his
room the day he died), rest like a blessing on his
forehead : the caressing breezes seem to welcome him
back again to the old familiar haunts. He climbs the
well known hill ; he seeks the sequestered meadow,
where, at sunset, or in the moonlight, he used to sit
with Tom and Bill and the Judge, and the other dear
old boys (those old boys that will sing his Ivy song
next year !), some dead years ago — some grown
beyond his reach now — some fallen behind, and
forgotten in the race of life — again he hears the well
known voices ; he lives once more the golden hours
of his youth.
" We spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine ;
But search of deep Philosophy,
Wit, Eloquence, and Poesy ;
Joys which I loved, for they, dear friend, were thine."
Before he passes out of this enchanted town, he
pauses a few moments by the Ivy vine, planted by
his class on their graduation day, against the College

Library. The winters have been tender to it, and he
sees its clinging tendrils ever widening in their grasp,
and aspiring toward Heaven. There is a mist in his
eyes as he makes out his class number, carved in the
stone, near the ivy's root. He remembers, then, if he
has at all forgotten them, the pure and lofty ideals,
the high and noble aspirations of the youthful group
that sang, and wept, and clasped and parted hands
when that sacred vine was planted there ; and he goes
away," (and now follows a high strain of manliness
and affection), "he goes away, swearing by his love
for the old class, the old friends, and the old college,
henceforth to guide his man's wisdom by the purer
intuitions of his youth." It is worth repeating, " To
guide his man's wisdom by the purer intuitions of his
youth." It is pleasant to know that his friends in New
Haven will cut slips from this ivy next spring to be
planted on his grave.
And here is what some of his classmates and
Professors wrote when they heard he was dead.
Professor Peck said :
" In college days he was loved and respected as

verv few are, and he carried on into manhood so
much of his early enthusiasm and childlike frankness
that his presence here was always most welcome."
Professor Farnam of Yale College wrote :
" Yale College had no more loyal and devoted
son ; certainly no graduate better represented the
ancient virtue and manliness which we are proud to
hand down to younger generations. This feeling is
universal. "
President Carter of Williams said :
" He seemed to me the perfect combination of the
best manhood with its sweetest boyhood, to have
gained the discipline of experience without losing the
openness and enthusiasm of youth."
President Porter of Yale College wrote as
follows :
" Few men of his age and of his position in life,
were loved with a purer and intenser love, so
admired with a sort of chivalric affection, and few
have deserved this love and honor more. I think
the blessing of the pure in heart was certainly his in
whatever world he should find his place. That he
should have been called out of life so abruptly and

so tragically makes his death distressing, but makes
little difference to those who are called to lose
his cheerful, modest ways, his genuine and living
presence : or to him who was bidden to go. But
his sudden and painful removal was ordered wisely
and well, and on this faith we only rest in submission
and peace."
We close these extracts with several from his
class. Judge Newell, so called by his dearest friends, of
St. Paul, wrote :
" He has always been my ideal of loyalty and
truth. He was the best man left of what we used
to call the old crowd, and they were all good men."
H. S. Brown, another classmate :
" One of his strongest characteristics was his
capacity for identification with the interests about
him and with which he had to do. He was of so
fine grain in so many ways — and was so genuine,
so singularly true hearted, liking once and never
changing — and exquisitely permeated with that
sweetest of all virtues, charity for others." This
is all very true, and a beautiful tribute.

While living in New York, once a week some of
his most intimate college friends would gather
regularly in his room and keep alive the associations
of their college life. Out of this little gathering
sprang the present University Club of New York, of
which he was one of the charter members ; and to
him more than to any one else it owes its existence.
All that great Club grew out' of Kernochan's
companionableness and the democracy of his
friendships. And this brings us, in following the circle of his
life, to Pittsfield. He came here in 1873, a stranger
to us all, and bought the Bel Air mill. How he
devoted himself to it we all remember. Early and
late, in storm as well as fair weather, winter and
summer, year after yeai-, we saw him going to and
coming from the mill. All the energy of mind and
body were thrown into that enterprise, setting a
manly example of devotion to his calling, and
willingness to work, worthy of imitation by us all.
Meanwhile he was twice elected selectman ; he was
first a vestryman, and then junior warden in
St. Stephen's Church, and took General Bartlett's

place as a trustee of the Berkshire Athenseum.
So well is the impression he had made by this time
on the town set forth in the resolutions written by
his friend. Judge Barker, and spread on the records
of the Athenaeum, that I introduce them here :
"A thorough scholar, with wide knowledge and
keen, well trained intellect, always the perfect
gentleman in instinct, thought and action, thoroughly
honest and patriotic in the discharge of the duties
of citizenship, and a Christian, faithful to his Lord in
the discharge of his religious duties, he came to
Berkshire in the full vigor of early manhood, gave
to us a worthy example of the best product of
metropolitan life, and was taken from us in the full
prime of his powers and usefulness. He threw
himself with zeal, and tact, and intelligence into
extensive and arduous business undertakings, into
the duties of a new citizenship, into the service of
his Church, into our social and intellectual life, with
the effect of aiding, enriching and refining the
community, while gaining for himself its respect
and esteem. He studied our ways with care, and
criticized them with such candor and fairness and

adopted or improved upon them with such honest
courtesy, that always with pleasure we thought him
better, or found ourselves better than before. With
perfect courage and intense activity he shrank from
no labor and quailed before no danger, ever making
the most of himself, and worthily striving to make
the most of all with which he had to do. That his
success was great, the profound shock occasioned by
his death, the unexampled mourning at his funeral,
the sense of loss which has since pervaded the
community and the personal grief of all of us
bear witness."
So just and so forcible is this portrayal of the
services he rendered and how he was esteemed, and of
the man and his nature, that every lover of his mem
ory will agree with me, that it is a pity the pen that
wrote these resolutions had not done the duty my fee
ble pen is now trying sadly to perform.
And now, having been sculptured out of the cold
marble of truth, and set aloft by these resolutions,
it only remains for me to say a word of what he
was here in the. Club, and then close. Who ever
did more to make it enjoyable or reflect more honor

upon it when the stranger was within its gates f
Who in it ever held higher ideals, or showed a
keener realization of the duties that educated men
owe to their fellow men and society 1 Who ever
remembers when he was not on the side of virtue,
and who ever did more to make good manners
attractive by their naturalness ? Who could differ
from you so fiercely — for he loved dearly to
combat something, and sometimes it was really
amusing to see the pleasure he took in it — and
yet made so clear a distinction between the man
and his argument 1 Who ever faced a question
with more fairness 1 To whom did we ever listen
with more pleasure, or whom did we enjoy more
when the cigars were lighted ?
He loved to fish, but so tirelessly did he attend to
his mill that rarely oftener than once or twice a year
did he ever taste this recreation. He loved to play
whist — and I to play with him — and believed in all
the superstitions of the seats, the grain of the wood,
and the color of the cards, and would argue that he
believed the law of luck would some day be
discovered. When the luck was with him he was a

cautious player, when against him a rash one, and a
pleasant one always.
If I were called upon to answer what kind of a
man he was, I should say he was primarily an
intellectual one, for his mind always delighted in
the fruits of literature, and no fact corroborates this
more than a copy in manuscript now at my hand,
of Chatterton, which he was putting into modern
English, but was anticipated by some one in England.
Among other papers, also, is the manuscript of a
novel he had dramatized. That he loved poetry
we have seen ; the only example of his power in
tliis line he gave us was his sonnet on Bartlett.
Once more, and I will not go through all his fine
qualities, was his sincerity. That, it seemed to me, led
the van of all his manly virtues. Once more, for after
all it is not easy to lay down the pen, above all when
I think that it is the l^st time that it will ever be put
in motion for him in the Club, I want to speak of his
cheerfulness. If the day broke cheerily on which he
died let this trait of his heart throw its light across the
final leaf of his memorial. It beamed in his face, it
was in his voice, it was in the atmosphere when he

was around. He could whistle like a bird, and like a
bird he moved early ; he whistled when he was
dressing to go to his mill, he whistled and sang, so
light was his heart, when he came home from it.
When he went back to Yale on his pilgrim
ages his voice would be ready for the last song
of the night. Who does not remember it was he who
got onr quiet and sterling friend. Rev. Mr. Spear, to
sing " Roll on Silver Moon " on that trip of the Club
from Greylock ; and how gaily and yet how queerly it
sounded amid the darkness and the rain, how we all
enjoyed it, joined in the chorus, and cheered the
singer when he got through. Kernochan told me
many a time that he regarded this as the greatest feat
of his life; and then he would laugh at the
remembrance of it. But, alas, where are all who
were in that jolly crowd ? poor Tom Colt, Ensign
Kellogg, the soaring old eagle of the Club, happy
hearted and ethereal George Briggs. — (Mr. Spear is
seeking health in distant lands, and would be thankful
if he had a tithe of the health and good spirits of that
day) — and Kernochan, all in the grave. And all this
sweeps our hearts with November strains, bringing

down the leaves of our youth ; the blossoms for most
of us have fallen long ago.
He was above the average height, of fine
proportions, a most graceful bearing, and in his face
sat honesty, self-respect and the high look of
inherited gentleness.
His voice was loud, but he never was ashamed
of what it uttered. His address was such that the
world took him at first glance for what he was — a
cultured and fine gentleman.
He lived and died a devout Christian, and joined
his well-loved clergyman as well as he could in the
prayers of his Church a few hours before he died.
He was buried from the First Church, the same in
which he was married, because his own, the
Episcopal, was not considered safe, in view of the
numbers who expressed a wish to be present at this
solemn service ; and so vast was the concourse that it
filled all the church and the space before, and
blackened the green of the park.
And now all is over : he awaits the resurrection,
on whose morning we all hope to see him again.
MOEEIS SCHAPF.

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