mechanic, or
artist, or educators of the same school, to find either honorable or
lucrative employment, when society, though temporarily blinded by
ingenious but visionary projects of improvement, should learn the
practical difference between the whole of anything and its parts. He
would not have consented that any other department of college study
should be sacrificed even to the Mathematics.

"But he would have the Mathematics lie, physically, where God has
placed it, at the foundation. He would have the student early settled
and accustomed to the most approved methods and varieties of
demonstrative science. He would discipline the mind among the
certainties of numbers, that it might better search for truth among
the probabilities of things; just as we learn to swim where we can
touch bottom before it is safe to plunge into the deep. He judged
soundly that one must learn to use his reason before he can wisely
apply it to the purposes of life; and that without this preliminary
training nothing else can be learned well; and that whatever otherwise
seem to be accomplishments, turn out, at length, to be fantasies that
vanish in the turmoil and struggle of life, or mislead men into a
false and fickle management of affairs. Wherefore he felt the peculiar
responsibility of his position with all the intenseness of his earnest
and far-reaching mind. He knew that his department, though most
difficult to be commended to young men in general, was most
indispensable to their success, and he sought accordingly to magnify
his office. That he was a complete master of it is out of question. Of
this he has left enduring monuments; and not the least, I am happy to
say, in minds which he had trained.

"His own perception of relations was like intuition, and hence he was
sometimes uneasy at the embarrassments of students, even when
involuntary, and much more, when the result of indifference or
neglect, even though they might at times be increased by the rapidity
of his own illustrations. I should have dreaded to be taken by
Professor Chase to the blackboard, unless I had a good lesson, or a
good conscience; and I could not have been sure that the latter would
avail me without the former. But though I should have shrunk from the
criticism, I should have respected the man. If I feared him in the
lecture-room, I should honor him in his study; for there his warm
heart would open to the story of my mental trials, and he would lead
me, and