of one of the most gifted of all
the men it had been my privilege to know. We had not talked of
friendship; we had been unconsciously sowing its seed. He loved
to illustrate its strength and its steadfastness to me; I have
lived to appreciate and reverence the grandeur of the work which
he accomplished here."

III.

If we set them over against each other, the hearsay that besmirches
and the reminiscence that canonizes, we evoke a very human, living
personality: a man of keen intellect, of ardent and emotional
temperament, autocratic, fanatical, fastidious, and beauty-loving;
a loyal friend; an unpleasant enemy. "He saw black black and
white white, for him there was no gray." He was impatient of
mediocrity. "He could not suffer fools gladly."

No archangel this, but unquestionably a man of genius, consecrated
to the fulfillment of a great vision. It is no wonder that the
early graduates living in the very presence of his high purpose,
his pure intention, his spendthrift selflessness, remember these
things best when they recall old days. After all, these are the
things most worth remembering.

The best and most carefully balanced study of him which we have
is by Miss Charlotte Howard Conant of the class of '84, in an
address delivered by her in the College Chapel, February 18, 1906,
to commemorate Mr. Durant's birthday. Miss Conant's use of the
biographical material available, and her careful and restrained
estimate of Mr. Durant's character cannot be bettered, and it is
a temptation to incorporate her entire pamphlet in this chapter,
but we shall have to content ourselves with cogent extracts.

Henry Fowle Durant, or Henry Welles Smith as he was called in his
boyhood, was born February 20, 1822, in Hanover, New Hampshire.
His father, William Smith, "was a lawyer of limited means, but
versatile mind and genial disposition." His mother, Harriet Fowle
Smith of Watertown, Massachusetts, was one of five sisters renowned
for their beauty and amiability; she was, we are told, intelligent
as well as beautiful, "a great reader, and a devoted Christian
all her long life."

Young Henry went to school in Hanover, and in Peacham, Vermont,
but in his early boyhood the family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts,
and from there he was sent to the private school of Mr. and
Mrs. Samuel Ripley in Waltham, to complete his preparation for
Harvard. Miss Conant writes: "Mr. Ripley was pastor of the
Unitarian Church there (i