gregation, and I do care a great deal about some ministers."

Dr. Hedge then mischievously reminded me of my speech in Providence,
which I had entirely forgotten, and with a little mutual pleasantry he
went on his way and I on mine. Dr. Hedge's irony might have been
characterized as "a pleasant sour." I think that I felt, in spite of it,
the weight and value of his character, even when he appeared to treat me
with little consideration. I heard an excellent sermon from him one day,
at our own church, and went up after service to thank him for it. I had
with me three of my young children and, as I showed them, I said, "See
what a mother in Israel I have become." "It takes something more than a
large family to make a mother in Israel," said the doctor. I do not
quite know how it was that I took him, as the French say, into great
affection, inviting him frequently to my house, and feeling a sort of
illumination in his clear intellect and severe taste. Before I had come
to know him well, I asked Theodore Parker whether he did not consider
Dr. Hedge a very learned man. He replied, "Hedge is learned in spots."

Parker's idea of learning was of the encyclopaedic kind. He wanted to
know everything about everything; his reading and research had no limits
but those of his own strength, and for many years he was able to set
these at naught. He was wonderfully well informed in many directions,
and his depth of thought enabled him to make his multifarious knowledge
available for the great work which was the joy of his life. Yet I
remember that even he, on one occasion, spoke of the cinnerian matter of
the brain, usually termed the _cineritious_. Horace Mann, who was
present, corrected this, and said, "Parker, that is the first mistake I
ever heard you make." Parker seemed a little annoyed at this small slip.

I heard a second Phi Beta discourse from Dr. Hedge some time in the
sixties. I remember of it that he compared the personal and petty
discipline of Harvard College with the independent regime of the German
universities, which he greatly preferred. He also said, quite
distinctly, that he considered the study of German literature to-day
more important than that of the Greek classics. This was a liberal
theologian's point of view. I agreed to it at the time, but have thought
differently since I myself have acquired some knowledge of the Greek
language, and especially since the multiplication of good translations
has brought the gr