usually rank next in popularity to other professional men,--ministers,
lawyers, or doctors, as the case may be,--and a boy of nineteen, the
object of as much attention as Nathan Hale must have received, might
well be pardoned if his head had been slightly turned, in thus becoming
the admired teacher of a large class of young ladies. One special mark
of stability of character appears to have characterized this young man
in a greater degree than is always the case at the present day. Detached
as he was, as he supposed irrevocably, from the woman he loved, he
appears to have carried himself with almost middle-aged dignity, and,
what is not a little to his credit, even his intimate friends among his
classmates could not, by the most delicate cross-questioning, draw from
him anything suggesting more than a pleasant interest in any of the
young ladies with whom he was thrown in contact.

A letter that will be given in its proper place shows his courteous and
cordial interest in the little city he left when he entered the army;
yet it is rather a noteworthy fact that one of his classmates, writing
to him during his camp life, had to suggest that, as the young ladies he
had taught were always inquiring when he had heard from "Master," it
would doubtless give them pleasure if he could find time to write some
one of them a note with friendly messages to others, to show that he
still remembered them.

Many young men would hardly have needed such a suggestion. But Nathan
Hale, so far as we can learn, while given to warm friendships among his
classmates, and to the cultivation, while in New Haven, Haddam, and New
London, of the society of the best families, appears, from the
beginning, to have taken life seriously. Disappointed in the love of the
one woman for whom he cared, he had turned with sincere absorption to
the work to which he felt himself called before entering on the
theological course it is thought that his father had planned for him.

There is further evidence of Hale's notable gifts as a teacher. Colonel
Samuel Green, who had been a pupil of Hale in New London, said of him,
in oldtime phrase: "Hale was a man peculiarly engaging in his
manners--these were mild and genteel. The scholars, old and young, were
attached to him. They loved him for his tact and amiability.

"He was wholly without severity and had a wonderful control over boys.
He was sprightly, ardent, and steady--bore a fine moral character and
was respe