nything the boys said or
did except on one occasion. Henry Whitney said, in reciting
in Don Quixote, in the course of some discussion, "By Jingo,
Mr. Sales." Sales was struck with horror. He said it was
the most horrible phrase that ever came from the lips of mortal
man, and he should think the walls of the building where they
were would fall down on Whitney's head and overwhelm him.
What awful and mysterious meaning the words "by Jingo" had
for the old Spanish gentleman we never could discover. He
declined to give any explanation and treated the subject
as one to be avoided with horror ever after. I commend the
question to the consideration of philologists.

The treatment of the students in general by the authorities
and the college was stern, austere and distant. The students
had little social intercourse with the families or the professors,
except such of them as had relatives in Cambridge, which allowed
intercourse with the families of the professors. The professors
did nothing to encourage familiarity, or even to encourage
any request for help in the difficulties of study. Indeed
a boy who did that fell into disfavor with his companions,
and was called a fish.

President Eliot in some speech, I think before the graduates
of the Latin School, speaking of his life as a boy, said
he had a great respect for his little self. I cannot say that
of my young self at Harvard. My time was largely wasted
in novel reading or reading books which had not much to do
with the college studies, and lounging about in my own room
or that of other students. I am not sure that the period of
growth from sixteen to twenty is one when it is good for a
youth to study hard. So far as my observation extends the
poor scholars who have graduated at Harvard become as useful
and eminent men in after life as the good scholars. I do
not now think of any person, who has graduated first scholar
since Edward Everett, who became in after life a very great
man, although some of them have been very respectable. Judge
Thomas Russell, who was first in the class before mine, was
a very successful and brilliant man, performing admirably
everything that he undertook. He was a good judge of the
Superior Court, a good minister to Venezuela, a good advocate,
and an excellent political speaker. But he never attained
a place in the world equal to that of his classmate Gray,
who, if I remember right, did not have a part at Commencement.
Profes