at this way of living is beneficial, and talks of
the disciplinary power of soldiers' fare. It is true that a soldier,
living on a crust of bread and lying on the ground for love of country
or of duty, is ennobled by it; but it is also true, that a miser doing
the same things for love of stocks and gold is degraded; and a dreamer
doing it serenely unconscious is neither ennobled nor degraded, but is
simply laying the foundation for dyspepsia. To despise the elegances of
life when they interfere with its duties the part of a hero. To be
indifferent to them when they stand in the way of knowledge is the
attribute of a philosopher. To disregard them when they would
contribute to both character and culture is neither the one nor the
other. It was very well to cultivate the muses on a little oatmeal,
when resources were so scanty that a bequest of seven hundred and
seventy-nine pounds seventeen shillings and two pence was a gift
munificent enough to confer upon the donor the honor of giving his name
to the College so endowed; when a tax of one peck of corn, or twelve
pence a year, from each family was all could reasonably be levied for
the maintenance of poor scholars at the College; when the
Pilgrims--hardly escaped from persecution, and plunged into the midst
of perils by Indian warfare, perils by frost and famine and disease,
but filled with the love of liberty, and fired with the conviction that
only fortified by learning could be a blessing--gave of their scanty
stock and their warm hearts, one man his sheep, another his nine
shillings' worth of cotton cloth, a third his pewter flagon, and so on
down to the fruit-dish, the sugar-spoon, the silver-tipt jug, and the
trencher-salt; but a generation that is not astonished when a man pays
six thousand dollars for a few feet land to bury himself in, is without
excuse in not providing for its sons a dignified and respectable home
during the four years of their college life,--years generally when they
are most susceptible of impressions, most impatient of restraints, most
removed from society, and most need to be surrounded by every
inducement to a courteous and Christian life. What was a large winded
liberality then may be but niggardliness or narrowness now. If indeed
there be a principle in the case, the principle that this arrangement
is better adapted to a generous growth than a more ornate one, then let
it be carried out. Let all public edifices and private houses be