ich communicates (I believe) with a private part of the building, now
occupied by a dentist, (that sublime science having also found its way
into our college,) at unseasonable hours of the night, sometimes
accompanied with various remarks, one of which now occurs to me: "Oh,
you are not one of us!" (sung in operatic style.) The quiet of my
residence was, moreover, destroyed by horrid vociferations at all hours
of the night, before my very door, and regularly under my window, and
these were made not only by students, (of which there were only a few,
_supported in their insubordination_) but by an extra-academic body of
men and women, certain zealous religionists and their impenitent
coadjutors, evidently the abettors of my in-door enemies, _and by two of
my colleagues_. A night or week of such proceedings would be enough to
set a man crazy. What must be their effect if they continue for months?
And yet expressions like the following were perpetually ringing in my
ears:--"Go on!" "You _are_ the man!" "You are _not_ the man!" "Go on!
no, stop!" (by the same voice in the same breath.) "Out of the
Institution with that man!" (by the laurelled valedictorian of last
year.), "Stand up!" (by Prof. C----, close to my door.) "He started with
nothing!" (by the same voice in the same place). "Pray!" (by ditto.)
"You have finished!" "Go away!" "Thank God, that that man is out of the
Institution!" (by a lady member of a certain religious fraternity, on
terms of intimacy with a certain prominent politician of the
neighborhood.) "Pursue him, worm that never d-i-e-s!" (theatrically
shrieked by the same voice.) "You are a dead man! Dead, dead, dead,
dead!" (by the voice of a certain popular preacher.) "He is deceived, he
is deceived!" (by the spokesman of a body of theological students in
front of the neighboring Seminary, as I was passing.) And at times even:
"Die!" "Break!" (on the supposition that I was in embarrassed
circumstances.) "_Whore!_" even was one of the delectable cries! To
these I should add the mysterious blowings of noses (both within _sight_
and _hearing_,) frightfully significant coughs, horse-laughs, shouts and
other methods of demonstration, such as striking the sidewalk in front
of my windows with a cane, usually accompanied with some remark: "I
understand that passage so!" for example. A clique in the Historical
Society, (where I had been several times insulted at the meetings,) and
several religious coteries and secr