r of Harvard University, maintained to
the last the high intellectual standard of his ancestors. He died
several years ago. I was informed by his mother that at one period of
its history Columbia College desired to secure his services as a
professor, but that the Hon. Hamilton Fish, one of its trustees and an
uncompromising Episcopalian, objected on the ground of his Unitarian
faith and was sustained by the Board of Trustees. It seemed a rather
inconsistent act, as at another period of its history a Hebrew was
chosen as a member of the same faculty.

As nearly as I can remember, it was in the summer of 1845 that I spent
several weeks as the guest of the financier and author, Alexander B.
Johnson, in Utica, New York. Mrs. Johnson's maiden name was Abigail
Louisa Smith Adams, and she was the daughter of Charles Adams, son of
President John Adams. During my sojourn there her uncle, John Quincy
Adams, came to Utica to visit his relatives, and I had the pleasure of
being a guest of the family at the same time. He was accompanied upon
this trip by his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Charles Francis Adams, a young
grandson whose name I do not recall, and the father of Mrs. Adams, Peter
C. Brooks, of Boston, another of whose daughters was the wife of Edward
Everett. Upon their arrival in Utica, the greatest enthusiasm prevailed,
and the elderly ex-President was welcomed by an old-fashioned torchlight
procession. In response to many urgent requests, Mr. Adams made an
impromptu speech from the steps of the Johnson house, and proved himself
to be indeed "the old man eloquent." Although he was not far from eighty
years old, he was by no means lacking in either mental or physical
vitality. Mrs. Charles Francis Adams impressed me as a woman of unusual
culture and intellectuality, while her father, Peter C. Brooks, was a
genial old gentleman whom everyone loved to greet. He was at that time
one of Boston's millionaires; and many years later I heard his grandson,
the late Henry Sidney Everett, of Washington, son of Edward Everett,
say of him that when he first arrived in Boston he was a youth with
little or no means.

After the Adams party had rested for a few days a pleasure trip to
Trenton Falls, in Oneida County, was proposed. A few prominent citizens
of Utica were invited by the Johnsons to accompany the party, and among
them several well-known lawyers whose careers won for them a national as
well as local reputation. Among these I may espe