James Burrill Angell

“ I therefore grew up with an inherited attachment to the Whigs, save that like most of the Brown University students I was led by President Wayland's instructions to doubt the wisdom or justice of protective tariffs.
My college life covered the period from 1845 to 1849. In these days, when the faculty numbers nearly a hundred, it is difficult to comprehend how a faculty of seven men carried on the institution with vigour and success. I need hardly say that each one of the seven was a man of force and was admirably qualified for his special work. ”

“ Although the town was only twelve miles from Brown University, I was the first boy from Scituate to graduate from the college. But there had always been in the town some men of prominence in public affairs. Stephen Hopkins, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, lived there. In my own time, one governor of the State and one lieutenant-governor resided there; but the great mass of the inhabitants were hard-working farmers, who led toilsome, honest lives, and left little to their children beyond the inheritance they had received from their parents. ”

“ Even those who could not at the time receive them with complacency lived to recognize in them with gratitude "the wounds of a friend." No teacher rejoiced more than he in the success of his students in life or watched their careers with more interest. His course in history was fuller than that at any other college except Harvard. It was chiefly devoted to English constitutional history, though some time was given to American constitutional history. ”

“ When we came to the subject of slavery in our study of moral philosophy, we discussed it for three weeks. The robust personality of Dr. Wayland was felt throughout the whole life of the institution. The discipline which was administered exclusively by him was unnecessarily rigorous, the standard of scholarship was high, the intellectual demands upon the students were exacting. For those who attained high rank the life was a strenuous one. ”

“ When the vote on recommending for degrees was to be taken, he looked with abundant charity on those who had never been able to pass the examinations in mathematics, saying amiably, "Let them pass. The conies are a feeble folk." The impress of his beautiful character upon all the students was never forgotten or entirely effaced.
President Wayland taught us intellectual and moral philosophy, political economy, and (in a brief course) the evidences of Christianity. I have met not a few of the men whom the world has called great ”

“ It is a good fortune for a boy to have known by experience what hard and continuous manual labour means.
The life in my native town during the years of my boyhood was much like that in the other rural towns of Rhode Island. It was very simple and frugal. The population was of pure English descent. I think my father within the period of my recollection brought the first Irish maid-servant into the town. Farming was the chief occupation. There were half-a-dozen cot-ton factories of moderate size scattered through the town; but the operatives were drawn from the farms and were all Americans. ”

“ But their method was then generally in vogue, and the teaching was excellent of its kind.
To nearly every student the most important event in his college life in those days was the contact with the vigorous and suggestive mind of Dr. Wayland, in the senior classroom, and especially during the study of moral philosophy. It is difficult for those who know Dr. Wayland only by his writings, valuable as some of them are, to understand how he made so deep an impression on his pupils. He was not a great scholar ”

“ If the children were now willing to practise the same industry and frugality they could live with equal comfort upon the farms. But they are rapidly selling them to the Irish and the French, who are willing to practise even greater economy than the fathers did two generations back, and so are living in comparative thrift. The change in the type of population is marked, as it is in most of the rural towns of New England, perhaps even more so, since the operatives in the factories are now almost all of foreign birth. ”

“ He had the art of the best French raconteur. I confess that my own intense interest in European politics and history dates from the hours I sat under the spell of George Greene's fine talk. And who of our American writers has surpassed him in a pure and flowing English style? I am sure the inspiration of the contact with so finished a scholar was lost on but few of the class, even though the demands for the details of recitation were not very exacting. ”

“ On the whole I think that any student in Brown University who did not graduate in those days with a mind well disciplined for entering upon any worthy career was himself greatly at fault.
The careers of the men who were in college in my time furnish the best proof of the value of the training then given. I may name a few of one hundred and forty students who were my college mates. In the class of 1846 were Thomas Durfee, Chief Justice of Rhode Island, a man of poetic gifts as well as of legal attainments ”

“ I have always felt that the knowledge of men I gained by the observations and experiences of my boyhood in the country tavern has been of the greatest service. Human nature could be studied in every variety, from that of the common farm labourer to travellers of the highest breeding and refinement. ”

“ I think that nearly one-fourth of the men in my class in their senior year used to learn in two hours—and that after an indigestible dinner in Commons&mdsah;fifteen pages of Smyth's "Lectures on History," so that they could repeat them with little variation from the text. The training in analysis was of very high value in teaching men to seize and hold the main points in an argument and to make points distinctly in the construction of a discourse. On looking back, I think most of the old students will agree that too much value was attached to memorized recitations. ”

“ We students in Brown believed that there was no better teaching in any college than in ours. Since reading Senator Hoar's description of the instruction at Harvard at the same time, and Andrew D. White's description of the instruction at Yale a little later, I am inclined to think that our impression was correct. The one college teacher of that time whose instruction took rank with that of Dr. Wayland was Mark Hopkins, President of Williams College. ”

“ Most of these were farmers' sons and daughters who wished to supplement the limited work of the district schools. A small number were preparing themselves for college. I joined them in their classes with no such purpose distinctly formed. I also took nearly all the scientific instruction which was given, and given as well as it could be without laboratories or much apparatus. Many of the students were men in years. They were diligent students. Some of them were awkward and rustic in manners, but they were thoroughly earnest and gave a good tone to the school. ”

“ The eminent political speakers were always entertained at our table, and some of them were very helpful friends in my later life. If, as I have sometimes been assured, I have any power of adaptation to the society of different classes of men, I owe it in no small degree to these varied associations of my boyhood. ”

“ Under that Constitution the right of suffrage was limited to the owners of land of the value of at least one hundred and thirty-four dollars and to the oldest sons of such land-holders. So long as the people of the State were engaged mainly in farming, in commerce and in whale fishing, there was no serious discontent with this limitation of the suffrage. But after the War of 181e, manufacturing, especially the manufacture of cotton, grew up rapidly in the State. By 1840 the operatives and the mechanics in the State, who had no right to vote, were a numerous body. ”

“ It may truthfully be said that the factory operatives had no other time for visiting or for pleasure.
The most numerous religious bodies in our part of the State were the Six Principle Baptists and the Freewill Baptists. The preachers of the former denomination were all men of limited education; so were most of the preachers of the latter. Naturally enough, the men of the most intelligence and influence rarely attended church, and the spiritual life of the town was at a rather low ebb. ”

“ The farmers got their limited supply of money from the sale chiefly of wood, char-coal, and potatoes, in Providence, and of milk and butter to the operatives in the mills. Some added to their income by turning bobbins and spools in the winter in small shops erected on little streams upon their farms. They found a ready market for their products in the cotton factories through the State. The practice of the greatest economy was necessary to make a small farm support a family. In 1840 the census-taker permitted me to accompany him in his gig over a large part of the town. ”

“ Drunkenness and gambling were not prevalent. A man supposed to be addicted to gambling or to licentiousness could not retain the public esteem. Political life was purer than it has been of late years in the State. ”

“ I have met in my day not a few distinguished men; but I recall none who have so impressed me with their power of personality, none who have uttered so many wise words which I recall every week to my advantage and help in the duties of my daily life. He was a very inapt pupil who passed from under Dr. Wayland's instruction without catching something of his catholic spirit, his passionate love of soul-liberty, and his earnest Christian principle.
The following incidents will give one an idea of his manner in the classroom. One day a rather conceited man said in the class when Dr. ”

“ I remember that men were divided as Carlyleists or anti-Carlyleists, Coleridgeians or anti-Coleridgeians, and so on, and that literary, historic, and philosophic theories were as hotly discussed as the current political questions of the day. ”

“ But none the less, many of them have found great advantage in life in the facility which they acquired in retaining with accuracy what they read or write. The reaction against training the memory has probably gone too far in these later days. ”