rvene, we meet as though we
had parted but yesterday. He has been a Judge of the Supreme Court, and,
I believe, the most eminent law authority in his adopted State; and he
would doubtless have been sent to take part in the National Councils,
but for an uncompromising sincerity and manliness in the expression of
his political opinions, little calculated to win votes.

And now came the time for a distinct step forward,--a step leading into
future life.

It was for some time a question in our family whether I should enter
Charles Dewey's office in Sheffield as a student at law, or go to
college. It was at length decided that I should go; and as Williams
College was near us, and my cousin, Chester Dewey, was a professor
there, that was the place chosen for me. I entered the Sophomore class
in the third term, and graduated in 1814, in my twenty-first year.

Two events in my college life were of great moment to me,--the loss of
sight, and the gain, if I may say so, of insight.

In my Junior year, my eyes, after an attack of measles, became so weak
that I could not use them more than an hour in a day, and I was [31]
obliged to rely mainly upon others for the prosecution of my studies
during the remainder of the college course. I hardly know now whether to
be glad or sorry for this deprivation. But for this, I might have been a
man of learning. I was certainly very fond of my studies, especially
of the mathematics and chemistry. I mention it the rather, because the
whole course and tendency of my mind has been in other directions. But
Euclid's Geometry was the most interesting book to me in the college
course; and next, Mrs. B.'s Chemistry: the first, because the intensest
thinking is doubtless always the greatest possible intellectual
enjoyment; and the second, because it opened to me my first glance into
the wonders of nature. I remember the trembling pride with which, one
day in the Junior year, I took the head of the class, while all the
rest shrunk from it, to demonstrate some proposition in the last book of
Euclid. At Commencement, when my class graduated, the highest part was
assigned to me. "Pretty well for a blind boy," my father said, when I
told him of it; it was all he said, though I knew that nothing in the
world could have given him more pleasure. But if it was vanity then, or
if it seem such now to mention it, I may be pardoned, perhaps, for it
was the end of all vanity, effort, or pretension to be a learned m