daughters. My father was the eldest, and at this time
was twenty-four years of age. He had been fitted for col-
lege, and had actually entered Amherst (in 1833), but with-
drew to go into business partnership with his father and
cousin. Soon after he married Sarah White, the elder
daughter of Captain Joseph Lester, of Griswold. He was
then twenty-two, and she twenty. I do not refer to this
early marriage as representing the common age, though
my mother's only sister was married at the age of eighteen
to the young pastor of the village church, the Reverend
William R. Jewett, of whom I shall have much to say.
Within two years after my grandfather's death, the affairs
in the home had been so far arranged, that my father was
able to carry out his plan of making his home and business
headquarters at Norwich, which thus became the home of
my childhood, till the death of my mother in my eighth
year. All my memories of that time and place are full of
charm, and some of them are very clear. I recall distinctly
my playmates — Charlie Coit, George and Dick Ripley,
Bela Learned, Kirk Leavens, and Sam Merwin. I recall
places with equal distinctness. Norwich was a town, in
many of its local associations, to delight the heart of a small



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 23

boy — the "landing" at the head of the Thames, formed
by the junction of the Yantic and Shetueket, where the
passengers of the steamboat train from Boston then took
the boat for New York; the "Httle plain" where I lived,
with Savin's Hill in the background carrying the jail of
fearful suggestion just over its summit; the "big plain" a
mile above at Norwich Town used as a muster field; the
little shops at the landing full of boy's treasures; and the
stately homes which even a boy's eyes could really see —
all these come back to me under the full charm of memory.
There was one object above others which stirred my boyish
sentiment and imagination — the then newly erected mon-
ument to Uncas, chief of the tribe of Mohican Indians, the
faithful friend and ally of the early settlers, from whom
came the site of the city of Norwich. It was Samson Occom
of this tribe, whose application to enter Dr. Wheelock's
school in the neighboring town of Lebanon transformed it
into the Indian School which became the precursor of
Dartmouth College. As a boy I knew nothing of this con-
nection, but in these last years I have liked to relate this,
among some other scenes of my boyhood, to my later work.
My birthplace was within easy distance of the town of
Windham, the birthplace of Eleazar Wheelock, the
Founder of Dartmouth, and nearer still to Lebanon, the
birthplace of his son and successor to the presidency of
the college. As the ninth president of Dartmouth, the suc-
cession to the Wheelocks never seemed as remote and un-
real to me as w^ould doubtless have been the case but for
these early impressions and associations.

The one grief attaching to these memories is the fact
that I have so little remembrance of my mother. How much
would I exchange for a satisfying glimpse of her face ! Her



24 MY GENERATION

portrait shows a somewhat sad face, but all who remember
her speak of her great vivacity and good-humor, her
alertness and courage, the freedom and fascination of her
manner. Doubtless it is well ordered that the lesser things
of childhood lodge most firmly in memory, but it may yet
be true that the greater things really find their way into
the unconscious influences which affect the whole after life.
I can see that the two persons who have had the most effect
upon my imagination were my grandfather, whom I never
saw, and my mother of whom I have so little personal
remembrance.

The death of my mother, followed by the subsequent
breaking-up of the home in Norwich, brought about a very
great change in the circumstances of my life. My later boy-
hood is associated entirely with the town of Plymouth,
New Hampshire. I have referred to the marriage of my
mother's sister to the Reverend William R, Jewett, then
pastor of the church in Griswold. He had now become the
pastor of the Congregational Church in Plymouth. Thither
I was taken upon the death of my mother, for the time be-
ing, but, as it proved to be, for my permanent home. Upon
the second marriage of my father some years after, and his
removal to Sandusky, Ohio, and later to Chicago, I was in-
formally, but in a very real sense, adopted into the home
of my uncle and aunt, and the name of Jewett was incor-
porated into my own name. As might be supposed, the
journey from Norwich to Plymouth was full of exciting
incidents, chief of which was the celebration of the intro-
duction of the Cochituate water into Boston the day after
our arrival there. My father, like most business men from
eastern Connecticut, when a visitor in Boston, was a guest
at the United States Hotel. That particular visit at this



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 25

hotel filled my childish mind with wonder not unmixed with
awe. I do not know what my thoughts would have been,
could I have anticipated the fact that forty years later,
this same small boy would be tried for heresy within these
same walls, at a court extemporized in the old dining-hall
of the hotel for the trial of certain Andover professors by
the Board of Visitors. The railroad journey ended at
Concord, New Hampshire, or possibly at Meredith
Bridge, now Laconia, the remainder of the trip being
taken by stage. As the heavily loaded stage came within
a short distance of Plymouth, it "took fire," in the ver-
nacular of the road, — a heated axletree, that is, set the
wood casing in a flame — and so we entered the town.
Could any entry have been more to the mind of a small
boy!

Plymouth was a shire town of Grafton County, or more
exactly a half-shire tow^n, dividing the distinction with
Haverhill. In the distribution of social and professional
life throughout New England at that time, the proportion
which fell to the shire towns far exceeded their relative
rank in population. The towns chosen for county seats
w^ere usually of good traditions, supported by families
of position and culture, and the courts brought to them a
constant influx of legal talent. Jeremiah Mason and Mr.
Webster were frequent attendants at the court held at
Plymouth. The town also had the social advantage of its
site at one of the gateways to the Franconia and White
Mountains, detaining many travelers by the charm of its
own immediate environment. Ex-Senator Blair, also an
adopted son of Plymouth, has often said to me that his
later knowledge of the country had shown him no town
more representative of good breeding and good manners.



26 MY GENERATION

instancing in proof the characteristics of some of the lead-
ing famihes of the time.

Of course, it would not take a boy with an inherent love
of sport long to find his place among new playmates. But
those whom I recall quite as well as my mates were some of
the men who answered so well Phillips Brooks's designation
of "boys' men." Such was one of our neighbors, the best
fisherman in the region, who was always ready to tell us
just where we could find the biggest trout, but always
adding, "It's no use; they'll just sniff at your bait and say
they guess they'll wait for Sam Rowe to come round."
And they always did. Such, too, was Benjamin ^Ya^d, a
little farther up the hill, the old cabinet-maker, full of the
lore of quaint histories. Many an hour have I sat in his
shop, listening with wondering ears to his tales of lost
islands of the sea, and buried cities of the land. Such was
O. H. P. Craig, — later Captain Craig, of the Sixth New
Hampshire Infantry, — the soul of good-humor and manly
sense, whose presence radiated so healthy an influence
over boys, that I do not wonder that as young men they
followed him in battle. And quite near by my home,
where I was sent on daily errands, and where I was apt to
stay much oftener on my own account, were Uncle and
Aunt Noah Cummings, both equally entitled to the mas-
culine Noah, the undisputed authorities on all neighbor-
hood happenings. Of course every boy knew the stage-
drivers, and was wuse in his discriminations about the
handling of the four-horse and the six-horse teams. Even
when the coming of the railroad two years later trans-
ferred something of this wisdom to the names of the en-
gines, and their respective capacities in speed and power,
the stages held the center of interest so long as they con-
trolled the way to the mountains.



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 27

My early school days were passed chiefly in the "Acad-
emy" under its changing fortune of teachers; but the
most unique experience was in a private school taught for
several sessions in the Methodist vestry by Mr. Cass, a
graduate of Wesleyan. Mr. Cass was very near-sighted,
and had the still greater infirmity, for a teacher, of a passion
for long and unusual words; but he knew how to teach in
spite of his infirmities. No other teacher whom I ever
knew could have called a school to order and actually
achieved the result, in these words, "Let the school now
preserve tranquillity."

In a like casual but very real way, every boy took his les-
sons at first hand, and without partiality, in the school of
Nature. He learned the true meaning of its democracy. It
was easy to fling the saddle on his horse, and take a morn-
ing or evening ride to "Prospect" for the view from Winni-
pesaukee to the mountains; easy to follow the streams
with his rod, easy to take all winter sports, though at their
price. I have never believed that the city boy, developed
into the summer resident who takes Nature in her gentler
moods, ever quite knows the meaning of what I have called
the democracy of Nature — the rule of those great and
masterful equalities which far surpass any democracy of
society.

The village boys of my time were keen politicians. Early
and late they attended the March meetings in the old town
house, and were never disappointed if the meetings were
prolonged into the second day. They knew the personal
bearing of every vote. They were less surprised than
many of their elders at the results of some elections. I can
recall as if it were yesterday, the faces of some of the older
Democrats of Plymouth on the morning following the first



28 MY GENERATION

election in the "Know-Nothing Campaign." A carica-
turist could have filled his notebook with telling sketches.

Boyhood in New England before the arrival of the mod-
ern boy does not suffer by comparison with later condi-
tions. The things essential to a boy's life w^ere there, not
ready made for him in modern abundance and often be-
wilderment, but ready for him to shape to his own ends.
He was well supplied with the materials, if not with the
finished product. Village life of the larger type was not
straitened in itself, nor was it inaccessible to the outer
world. The knowledge of good and evil came early to the
mind of an eager and curious boy. The poetic fancy of a
secluded or sheltered life is a moral delusion. It was no
easier then than now for a boy to endure the restraints
necessary to right conduct. But the family training of that
time did not stand primarily for repression. I should say
that the prevailing note was freedom. The stage of over-
training had so far passed by that there was little sense of
unnecessary restriction. The restrictions put upon a boy
were for the most part such as were shared by his elders,
like certain observances of Sunday. They belonged to the
customs and conventions of social and religious life. The
forms of religion were a part of the family routine, but its
realities were no less a pervasive influence.

The education of the home was concerned with more than
morals and religion. The home was the medium through
which a great many educational influences reached the
mind of a boy. It is a mistake to suppose that there was a
dearth of interesting books. My uncle's library was that of
a minister, but I found there just the kind of reading I
wanted. "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," and
the "Arabian Nights," all well illustrated, made the first



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 29

appeal to the imagination. Then Scott's "Tales of a Grand-
father" and the " Waverley Novels," and later Plutarch,
and the more stirring biographies and histories and books
of travel. Guests, no less than books, kept the home open to
the outside life. They made their constant impression, and
often with the most quickening effect. And above all, the
personal element entered into the daily education. My
uncle, to whom I go back with so much interest as well as
affection, was not what I have called "a boy's man." He
really did not know how to get into a boy's life, but he
knew what was so much better, how to let a boy into his
own life — and how roomy and hospitable it was ! There
were so many ways in which all unconsciously to himself
he was a companion or a stimulating presence. He was
an enthusiastic lover of the mountains, knowing them all
within a wide range by name, and at home among them
all. He was a charming conversationalist among his guests,
and a genuine man among men at large, making it a pleas-
ure to be by his side in the home or on the road. And he
knew books that other people would have liked to know,
and how to make them tell their own story through his
unconscious enthusiasm, and his equally unconscious but
very real strain of hero-worship. I am afraid that he let
some very doubtful historical characters into company
with the saints. He shared in the fascination which Byron
cast over Lyman Beecher and some other ministers of the
time, and never altogether forgave England for the ban-
ishment of Napoleon to St. Helena. His sense of humor
was keen, but there was a delightful contradiction about
it. He would shake his sides over Sidney Smith, but the
reading of "Pickwick" could draw from him only a sym-
pathetic smile.



30 MY GENERATION

As I recall my own experiences in a Puritan home, and
those of my mates, I have Httle sympathy with the men of
my generation who attribute any subsequent license on
their part in morals and religion to the strictness of their
early training. The home life of that period as I saw it had
found the normal balance between authority and indul-
gence. There were exceptions, but I am inclined to think
that a good many of the uncomfortable experiences which
linger in the minds of some men should be charged to the
narrowness or temper or obstinacy of individual parents
rather than to Puritanism. And due account should be kept
as we grow older with the results of our own youthful mis-
chiefs and follies. Whatever the Puritan home may have
been aforetime I know only by report, but when it be-
came the home for my generation, it stood for a natural,
intelligent, and reasonably free approach to the world.

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE

In the decade which preceded the Civil War, as in the
previous decades of the century, the college was the domi-
nant factor in the educational life of the country. It was
the higher education. The older colleges bearing at the time
the title of universities were universities only in name,
except through a loose association in some instances of one
or two professional schools. The university idea, as I have
elsewhere noted, did not really enter the educational sys-
tem till the decade following the war.

The academy stood in like relation to secondary educa-
tion. It was until late in the century the secondary school
of the country. Dr. Harris, former United States Com-
missioner of Education, is authority for the statement
that there were about forty public high schools in 1860.



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 31

Among these were a few notable ones, chiefly in New Eng-
land, like the Boston Latin. But in 1850, there were over
6000 academies, with an enrollment of 263,000 pupils, and
an annual income (including tuition) of $5,800,000. The
wide distribution of these academies created a great many
small intellectual centers. They gave, until the public
school system had produced the full quota of high schools,
a certain educational advantage to the country towns
above the cities. The catalogue of any New England col-
lege of the period will show a large percentage of stu-
dents from country schools. Account, however, must be
taken of students from the cities in attendance at these
schools.

There was an almost absolute uniformity among the
older colleges of the period, resulting in a corresponding
equality in numbers and position. They all had the same
educational aim, the disciplinary and cultural in distinc-
tion from the vocational. There had been a time when they
might have been said to be highly vocational, viewed as
training schools for the ministry, but that time was long
past, and the newer vocations had not established their
claims upon the colleges. I doubt if the ministry ever
secured such concessions as have now been granted, for
example, to medicine, by the allowance in many colleges of
two years of the course to be reckoned for the degrees both
of A.B. and M.D. I think that Senator Hoar in his remi-
niscences of life at Harvard (1842-46) ^ underestimates

^ "I do not think Harvard College had changed very much when I entered
it on my sixteenth birthday in the year 1842, either in manners, character of
students or teachers, or the course of instruction, for nearly a century. There
were some elementary lectures and recitations in astronomy and mechanics.
There was a short course of lectures on chemistry, accompanied by exhibiting
a few experiments. But the students had no opportunity for laboratory work.
There was a delightful course of instruction from Dr. Walker in ethics and meta-



32 MY GENERATION

somewhat the range of study then pursued in the colleges,
but the discipline was strictly intensive. Even some years
later, it did not reach beyond the ancient languages,
mathematics and physics, with excursions into astronomy,
logic and rhetoric, and philosophy and political science,
"Electives" in the modern languages and experimental
lectures in chemistry and geology hardly came within the
scope of the college discipline.

The most remarkable omissions from the curriculum
were of modern history and modern literature; but the
explanation is to be found in the provision made for private
reading in both departments. College libraries of that time
were primarily reading libraries. They were known as so-
ciety libraries and were largely maintained and managed by
students. These libraries have long since been incorporated
into the general college library of any given institution,
but at the time of their active existence they were a great
stimulus to reading. Students drew books from them up to
the limit of their allowance, especially for use in the long
winter vacation. I recall two courses in History which I
carried on by myself in two successive years — one on the
English Commonwealth, and one on Spanish conquests in
America. It seems like a singular inversion in disciplinary
methods that history and English literature are now made
the subjects of as intensive study as any subjects in the
curriculum.

The curriculum was a fixed quantity in all the colleges.
This made the ready interchange of students entirely prac-
ticable; and as there were fewer ties binding a student to a

physics. . . . There was also some instruction in modern languages, — German,
French, and Italian, — all of very slight value. But the substance of the instruc-
tion consisted in learning to translate rather easy Latin and Greek, writing Latin,
and courses in algebra and geometry not very far advanced."



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 33

particular college, the number of transfers was relatively
greater then than now. But the chief effect of the fixed cur-
riculum was to be seen within each college. It introduced
and fostered competition in scholarship. It did not for this
reason make scholars, but it converted a good many rather
indifferent scholars into competitors. As all the members of
a class were studying the same subjects at the same time,
results could be compared according to the same standards.
Hence a very general, and in some cases, a sensitive, inter-
est in "marks." And this interest was kept alive by the
fact that the daily recitation was chiefly oral, and before
the whole class if, as was usually the case, a class did not
number over sixty or eighty. There were limits to the de-
gree of ignorance or stupidity which one liked to display
before his classmates. The occasional sarcasm of a profes-
sor was of little account beside the instant and unanimous
and hearty tributes of one's fellows to his mental lapses.

A common characteristic of the colleges was the pre-
dominance of the personal element in teaching. Not only
was there little of an intermediate character in the way of
equipment, but little account was made of the science or
art of teaching. There was little of pedagogical training for
a professorship. Not all professors had even served an ap-
prenticeship by tutoring. The faculties were almost en-
tirely made up of full professors. A freshman had the best
a college had to offer, equally with a senior. There was thus
a certain equality of instruction in each college and in all
the colleges. Every college faculty had its well-recognized
scholars and influential teachers. The conspicuous names
which at once come to mind are distributed without pre-
eminence on the part of one or two colleges.

As a result of this uniformity among the older colleges,



3+ MY GENERATION

there was a remarkable numerical equality. I had occasion
to make comparison, at this point, among four of the older
colleges during the period of seventy years between the
close of the Revolutionary War, and the opening of the
Civil War, with this result. I quote the comparison of two
decades at the beginning, and two at the close of the period.

Number of Graduates by Decades

1790-1800 1800-1810 18W-1850 1850-1860

Harvard 394- 440 632 870

Yale 295 518 926 1009

Princeton 240 328 6i9 677

Dartmouth 362 337 591 639

A further result of the general uniformity among the
colleges was the tendency to produce something of an edu-
cational aristocracy among college graduates. I use the
term "educational" rather than "intellectual," because
the colleges never included or developed the artistic qual-
ity; and I use this term rather than the term "social, " be-
cause college life was not then tributary in any direct way
to social distinction. The college man stood, however, in
a distinct relation to the public. Much was expected of
him. If he returned to his native town to "settle down" he
met with a certain contempt. It was expected of him that
he would make his way into the larger world. I think that
his own consciousness accorded with this expectation.
Something of the traditional spirit of the English colleges
in their relation to public duty came over by inheritance
into the earlier college training in this country, and made
itself felt in a like "call to account very strictly to the
world for such talent or power as a man may have."

When I entered Dartmouth in 1857, I was much better
prepared to pursue the course of study than to understand



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 35

this moral significance of a college training. Largely, I sup-
pose, by my uncle's choice, but also because of the good
fortune of an unusual Latin instructor in the local academy,
I began Latin at an early age, so early that I never had
occasion to study English grammar. Preparatory Greek I
studied for a much shorter time, but under thoroughly com-
petent teachers, at Kimball Union Academy, the most pop-
ular fitting school for Dartmouth at that day. Mathema-
tics received scant measure among the three requisites for
college entrance, reduced still further in my case by per-
sonal restriction. I recall very clearly my examination for
college. It was made up of a succession of individual, oral
interviews, conducted by the professors in charge, in their
private studies. A certain fluency in reading from one or
two of the prescribed Latin authors brought from Professor
Sanborn, who was little inclined to waste any unnecessary
time in so tedious a business, the abrupt but pleasing re-
mark — "Well, there is no use in eating a joint of mutton
to tell whether it's tainted or not." The examination by
Professor Putnam in Greek was much more critical, but
confined chiefly to the grammar, in which I had been well
drilled. The examination in mathematics brought me to the
study of Professor Ira Young — father of the celebrated