ness of the Almighty, as
exemplified by His personal attention to my grandfather, the efficacy of
oil distilled from the liver of the cod, and the wisdom of Solomon, came
in for an equal share of attention. How the good old gentleman must have
enjoyed writing those letters! And, though I have never written my own
son three letters in my life, I suppose the desire of self-expression is
stirring in me now these seventy-eight years later. I wonder what he
would have said could he read these confessions of mine--he who married
my grandmother on a capital of twenty-five dollars and enough bleached
cotton to make half a dozen shirts! My annual income would have bought
the entire county in which he lived. My son scraped through Harvard on
twenty-five hundred dollars a year. I have no doubt that he left
undisclosed liabilities behind him. Most of this allowance was spent on
clothes, private commons and amusement. Lying before me is my father's
term bill at college for the first half year of 1835. The items are:

To tuition $12.00
Room rent 3.00
Use of University Library 1.00
Servants' hire, printing, and so on 2.00
Repairs .80
Damage for glass .09
Commons bill, 15-1/2 weeks at $1.62 a week 25.11
Steward's salary 2.00
Public fuel .50
Absent from recitation without excuse--once .03
-------
Total $46.53

The glass damage at nine cents and the three cents for absence without
excuse give me joy. Father was human, after all!

Economically speaking, I do not think that his clothes cost him
anything. He wore my grandfather's old ones. There were no amusements in
those days, except going to see the pickled curios in the old Boston
Museum. I have no doubt he drove to college in the family chaise--if
there was one. I do not think that, in fact, there was.

On a conservative estimate he could not have cost my grandfather much,
if anything, over a hundred dollars a year. On this basis I could, on my
present income, send seven hundred and fifty fathers to college
annually! A curious thought, is it not?