work. In the little more than half a
century of its existence, the number of New England colleges, founded
upon the same religious faith, had increased from three to eight,
rendering the best leadership necessary to meet the competition.

A more judicious selection could not have been made for the sixth
president of the college.

Rev. Nathan Lord, the son of John and Mehitable (Perkins) Lord, was
born at Berwick, Maine, November 28, 1792, and belonged to a highly
respectable family. At the early age of sixteen, he graduated at
Bowdoin College, in the class of 1809. Very rarely has a student at
college the opportunity to sit under the instruction of two such men
as Joseph McKeen and Jesse Appleton, each of whom filled the
president's chair two years, while young Lord was a student.

After valuable experience as a teacher in the Exeter Academy, he
pursued a theological course at the Andover Seminary, graduating in
1815. He had been twelve years pastor of the Congregational Church at
Amherst when called to the presidency of Dartmouth, having been for
some time a Trustee. In the intellectual strength and literary
attainments of its people, this had been for a long period one of the
leading towns in southern New Hampshire. Being the county seat, it was
visited periodically by gentlemen eminent in the law, with whom
professional men resident in the place would most naturally have
frequent intercourse. At a period when the whole community was
profoundly agitated, by the most earnest and important theological
controversy in the history of New England, we can readily understand
that the youthful preacher would have abundant opportunity to measure
swords with skilled warriors, in the field of religious debate. That
he wielded his weapons, in the discussions of that period, with a
force indicating that he was a man of no ordinary mould, is a matter
of history. When he entered upon his great work at Dartmouth, those
who, as its guardians, had called him to it, cherished confident hope
of his success. Seldom has there been so full a realization of such
hope in the history of American colleges.

President Lord brought to the accomplishment of his task a fine
physique; a countenance serene, yet impressive; a voice rare both for
its richness and its power; a pleasing, almost magnetic, dignity of
mien; a mind most capacious and discriminating by nature, richly
stored by severe application, and thoroughly disciplined by varied
prof