menced the study of Latin, going through
Ross' Grammar, the only one then in use, in just two weeks, and then
beginning to construe and parse in Corderius.

"He met, at the academy, one who had been his school-fellow and
playmate, and with whom he was intimately associated from that time
till the end of his college course,--the late Hon. Levi Jackson, who
died at Chesterfield in 1821. They got out their lessons together,
taking turns in looking out new words; and afterward, at college,
where they were classmates and room-mates, continued the practice. Dr.
Shurtleff felt under great obligations to this friend and helper, and
said that 'few friendships among men had been more ardent, confiding
and permanent.'

"Shurtleff had supposed, at first, that the Greek language was beyond
his reach, on account of his infirmity of sight. But some improvement
having taken place, he ventured to commence the study. He went through
the Westminster Greek Grammar, the book then in use, in one week, and
began to read the Gospel of John. Having completed the New Testament,
and read several books of Homer's Iliad, he was reputed in the school
as tolerably versed in Greek. He and Jackson studied from the love of
study, and did not think of college till a year before they applied
for admission, at Commencement, in 1797, and entered the Junior class
in this institution.

"The round of college duties presents few marked events. Time has left
no record of most of the occurrences which diversified and enlivened
the period from 1797 to 1799. How the two friends studied, and read,
and discussed, and recreated together, has been lost, just as the
facts of our daily life will be lost sixty years hence. They made
constant and good progress. They were about equally good scholars,
neither of them being a dead weight upon the other. Each was happy in
the other's proficiency. The amount of learning requisite for a degree
was less then than now. Sciences have been introduced into the course
which were then in their infancy. But it may be doubted whether the
students of our day have the advantage over those of an earlier
period, in respect to thoroughness as well as extent of attainment.
They read fewer books, in the first years of the college, but they
thought the more. They were as well disciplined and able, and as
competent to handle a difficult subject, I imagine, as our students,
if they were not as well informed. We know from the esteem in which
Sh