I think, after the sophomore year.
At the examinations, which were held by committees appointed
by the Board of Overseers, he always gave to the pupil the
same problem that had been given to him in the last preceding
recitation. So the boys were prepared to make a decent appearance.
He used to dress in a very peculiar fashion, wearing a queer
little sack and striped trousers which made him look sometimes
as if he were a salesman in a Jew clothing-store. He had
a remarkably clear and piercing black eye. One night one
of the students got into the belfry and attached a slender
thread to the tongue of the bell, contrived to lock the door
which led to the tower and carry off the key, then went to
his room in the fourth story of Massachusetts Hall and began
to toll the bell. The students and the Faculty and proctors
gathered, but nobody could explain the mysterious ringing
of the bell until Peirce came upon the scene. His sharp eye
perceived the slender line and it was traced to the room where
the roguish fellow who was doing the mischief thought himself
secure. He was detected and punished.

Peirce gained great fame in the scientific world by his controversy
with Leverrier. Leverrier, as is well known, discovered some
perturbations in the movement of the planet Herschel, now
more commonly called Uranus, which were not accounted for
by known conditions. From that he reasoned that there must
be another planet in the neighborhood and, on turning his
glass to the point where his calculations told him the disturbing
body must be, he discovered the planet sometimes called by
his name and sometimes called Neptune. This discovery created
a great sensation and a burst of admiration for the fortunate
discoverer. Peirce maintained the astounding proposition
that there was an error in Leverrier's calculations, and that
the discovery was a fortunate accident. I believe that astronomers
finally came to his conclusion. I remember once going into
Boston in the omnibus when Peirce got in with a letter in
his hand that he had just got from abroad and saying with
great exultation to Professor Felton, who happened to be there,
"Gauss says I am right."

I got well acquainted with Professor Peirce after I left
College. He used to come to Washington after I came into
public life. I found him one of the most delightful of men.
His treatise "Ideality in the Physical Sciences," and one
or two treatises of a religious character wh