eason of
the extraordinary silence that had followed my rhetorical outbreak. Said
one of my classmates at a reunion, "I shall never forget the day you
recited Lycidas; none of the fellows had ever done such a thing; they
neither knew nor cared for poetry, and your recitation was a revelation
to us all. It came like a shock and thrilled us to bigger things. We
never forgot it."

So impressionable and plastic is youth in its formative period that it
only takes one great poem to unlock for it the higher mysteries.

We taught ourselves patriotism in season, and before the days of
attenuated and hypersensitive politics. Rough fellows were we, dressed
in cheap coats, eating coarse food, sleeping on hard beds in cold rooms,
and I fear the well was not much called upon for baths. We read but
little. There was not a newspaper nor magazine taken in the whole
establishment, and how we knew what was going on in the world I cannot
tell; yet in some way it penetrated our seclusion. In such a small and
socially affiliated school, what one knew, all the others soon imbibed.
We were every one of us Yankee boys, acquisitive and resolved to make
the most of ourselves and our small opportunities. The library of the
institution contained about a hundred volumes, and of these some were
religious books. There was a ragged, greasy Shakespeare in eight volumes
which I tried to read through, but found the task too much for me.
However, I did have a glimpse of something for which I found myself
unprepared; and such is the constitution of my mind, that I have seldom
been able to grasp dramatic writing with complete enjoyment; I am apt to
dwell too long on its beauty spots. For this reason I prefer the Greek
drama, because of the simplicity of its construction. The characters are
fewer, and, I may say, not so personal, and there are not so many
threads to keep in hand. I am in no perplexity when I begin Agamemnon
and Antigone; there is a clear, simple and straight path for action. The
one book which we all read with greatest diligence was Todd's Student's
Manual. As we did not really study much, it seemed best to know all
about the methods and rules for study. The book was stuffed full of
sound advice in regard to the regulations of the student's time, diet,
sleep and exercise; in short, what may, without offense, be called the
mechanical apparatus for the acquirement of education and character. I
am sure I profited much from this manual, although