vy and Army, University, Bench, and
Academy, City and Commonwealth, meet, by their first representatives, at
his grave, in recognition of specific service of the most eminent
character which he has rendered to each of them, and which it would be a
shame for them to fail to own.

In a little sketch of his college life, which he once sent me, there is
an estimate--made at the age of sixty-one--of his own standing when he
was a Sophomore, in comparison with some of his classmates. Some of
those he names have passed on before him; two of them remain with us, to
be honored always for the fruits of that scholarship which he observed
so young. I think there can be nothing wrong in publishing a
recollection, which, by accident, gives a hint as to the method of his
own after-life to which I have alluded.

"I was considered, I believe, as taking rank among the few best scholars
of the [Sophomore] class, although there was no branch in which I was
not equalled--and in several I was excelled--by some of my classmates,
except perhaps Metaphysics. Thus, I was surpassed by Cooper in Latin,
but he was wholly deficient in Mathematics, and regarded with pity, not
altogether unmixed with contempt, all who had a taste for that study.
Story, a brother of Mr. Justice Story, excelled me in Greek, but he
neglected everything else, and seemed to get at the Greek rather by
intuition than study. Fuller, Gray, and Hunt were my superiors in
Mathematics; but in other studies I was the rival of Fuller, and Hunt
made no pretensions to general scholarship;--for the branch in which he
excelled he had a decided genius. Gilman was a more practised writer
than I; so was Damon; and Frothingham greatly excelled me in speaking,
and was in everything a highly accomplished scholar. If I had any strong
point, it was that _of neglecting no branch_ and _doing about equally
well in all_."

He had occasion enough to show in all life that it is a very strong
point, this "of neglecting no branch, and doing equally well in all."
And in his estimates of other men, I think,--though he was more
charitable in his judgments than any man I have ever known,--he always
had latent the feeling that men could do almost anything they really
resolved to do. You could never persuade him that a public speaker could
not learn to speak well. He did not pretend that all men could speak
equally well, but he really thought that it was the duty of a man, who
meant to speak in public, to