Park used to call "the doughnut business;" and, though we
cultivated a weekly prayer-meeting in the lecture-room, I think its
chief influence was as a training-school for theological students
whose early efforts at public exhortation (poor fellows!) quaveringly
besought their Professors to grow in grace, and admonished the
families of the Faculty circle to repent.

But we had our lectures and our concerts--quite distinct, as orthodox
circles will understand, from those missionary festivals which went, I
never discovered why, by the name of Monthly Concerts--and our
Porter Rhets. I believe this cipher stood for Porter Rhetorical; and
research, if pushed far enough, would develop the fact that Porter
indicated a dead professor who once founded a chair and a debating
society for young men. Then we had our anniversaries and our
exhibitions, when we got ourselves into our organdie muslins or best
coats, and listened to the boys spouting Greek and Latin orations in
the old, red brick Academy, and heard the theological students--but
here this reporter is forced to pause. I suppose I ought to be ashamed
of it, but the fact is, that I never attended an anniversary exercise
of the Seminary in my life. It would be difficult to say why. I think
my reluctance consisted in an abnormal objection to Trustees. So far
as I know, they were an innocent set of men, of good reputations and
quite harmless. But I certainly acquired, at a very early age,
an antipathy to this class of Americans from which I have never
recovered.

Our anniversaries occurred, according to the barbaric custom of the
times, in the hottest heat of August; and if there be a hotter place
in Massachusetts than Andover was, I have yet to simmer in it. Our
houses were, of course, thrown open, and crowded to the shingles.

I remember once sharing my tiny room with a little guest who would not
have the window open, though the thermometer had stood above ninety,
day and night, for a week; and because she was a trustee's daughter,
I must not complain. Perhaps this experience emphasized a natural lack
of sympathy with her father.

At all events, I cherished a hidden antagonism to these excellent and
useful men, of which I make this late and public confession. It seemed
to me that everybody in Andover was afraid of them. I "took it out" in
the cordial defiance of a born rebel.

Then we had our tea-parties--theological, of course--when the students
came to tea in alphabet