d laying out its course of
study. In the work of organization, Dr. Ballou received important and
valuable assistance from John P. Marshall, the present senior professor
and dean of the College of letters. The College was first regularly
opened for the admission of students in August, 1855, though a few
students had been residing at the College and receiving instruction from
the president and Professor Marshall during the previous year. In the
beginning the success of the institution was as marked as its friends
could reasonably expect. But the great anxiety attending the beginning
and development of so important an undertaking seriously affected the
health of Dr. Ballou, and he was cut down before the College could avail
itself of the transcendent abilities which he brought to the discharge
of his duties, and before he could witness the almost unexampled
material prosperity awaiting it. President Eliot generously said not
long since that the remarkable growth of Harvard University in these
later years is largely the fruit of the efforts of James Walker, a fit
contemporary and fellow-worker in the cause of education with Dr.
Ballou. Truly, other men labor and we enter into their labors. In an
important sense the College was the creature of Dr. Ballou's brain. He
had so clear a conception of the nature and scope of an institution of
learning of the highest grade suited to this latitude and these times,
and he was so successful in producing a conviction of its possibilities
in the minds of rich men, that they were ready to devote to it their
all. But he died before the fruits of his labors had begun to appear.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF CHAPEL.]

In the spring of 1862, the Rev. A. A. Miner, D.D., was elected to
succeed Dr. Ballou, and continued to hold the office until his
resignation in February, 1875, a period of nearly thirteen years. Dr.
Miner did not take up his residence at the College nor relinquish his
connection with the School Street parish in Boston, of which he was
pastor. But he visited the College daily, or as often as his presence
was required. It was during his presidency and largely through his
instrumentality that the extraordinary material development of the
College was secured. Very soon after its establishment, Silvanus
Packard, a prosperous merchant and a parishioner of Dr. Miner, who was
without children, announced his intention of making Tufts College his
child. He gave generously to it during his