oper took the boy's part against the faculty
version and brought his son home. Yet something from his books James
Cooper must have gleaned, for there is a story of a young sailor who, in
some public place in the streets of an English port, attracted the
curiosity of the crowd by explaining to his companions the meaning of a
Latin motto.
[Illustration: DR. TIMOTHY DWIGHT.]
[Illustration: YALE COLLEGE, 1806.]
[Illustration: WILLIAM JAY IN YOUTH.]
The Albany, school-boy days of William Jay and James Cooper were renewed
at Yale where was welded their strong life-friendship. On the college
roll of their time appear amongst other names that of John C. Calhoun of
South Carolina, and the scholarly poet Hillhouse of New Haven. In the
Dodd, Mead & Company's 1892 issue of "William Jay and the Constitutional
Movement for the Abolition of Slavery," by Bayard Tuckerman, with a
preface, by John Jay, appears a letter dating 1852, written by Judge
William Jay to his grandson. This letter gives graphic glimpses of
Yale College life during the student days there of its writer and James
Cooper: "The resident graduates were denominated 'Sirs'; their place in
Chapel was called 'the Sirs pew'; and when spoken of in college 'Sir'
was always placed before their names. At that time the freshmen
occupied, in part, the place of sizers in the English universities, and
they were required to run errands for the seniors. My room-mate was Sir
Holly (Dr. Horace Holly). As a mere freshman, I looked up to my
room-mate with great respect, and treated him accordingly. About half
past five in winter, the bell summoned us from our beds,--I rose,
generally, before six,--made the fire, and then went, pitcher in hand,
often wading through snow, for water for Sir Holly and myself. Of the
college bell," the letter continues: "at six it called us to prayers in
the chapel. We next repaired to the recitation-rooms and recited, by
candlelight, the lessons we had studied the preceding evening. At eight
we had breakfast,--our meals were taken in a large hall with a kitchen
opening into it. The students were arranged at tables according to their
classes. All sat on wooden benches, not excepting the tutors; the
latter had a table to themselves on an elevated platform whence they
had a view of the whole company. But it was rather difficult for them to
attend to their plates and to watch two hundred boys at the same time.
Salt beef once a day, and dry cod were perha
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