OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : JUNE 9, 1868. 19 



From 1803 until 1817 Professor Day filled the chair to which he 

 was first appointed, and on the death of Dr. Dwight, with very great 

 shrinking, accepted the vacant office of President. The two men were 

 in many respects quite opposite. The one was impulsive, rhetori- 

 cal, brilliant, formed to command ; the other calm, philosophical, with- 

 out brilliancy, unwilling to lead. But the choice, as the event showed, 

 was a wise one. During the twenty-nine years of his presidency the 

 College grew steadily and surely. He had the respect and esteem of 

 all. His success showed, we think, that colleges, which often strive to 

 find brilliant untried men for their principal officers, men unused to 

 college ways and ignorant of that queer thing, a college student, might 

 do better sometimes, if they looked after a noiseless worker, experienced 

 in his calling, honored by those around him, who has proved himself 

 equal to all the emergencies of discipline and of instruction in the 

 past. 



At the age of seventy-three, President Day laid down his office, not be- 

 cause he felt any peculiar infirmities of old age creeping over him, but be- 

 cause he wished to resign before infirmities should weaken his judgment 

 and lead him to outstay his time. Followed by the love of all who 

 had known him, — among whom were all the two thousand and \\\e 

 hundred to whom he had given a degree, — he retired into private life, 

 yet he was not wholly unconnected with the College, having been on his 

 resignation chosen into the Board of Fellows. In this corporation he 

 served until just before his death, and thus had had, as an officer and 

 a Fellow, a share in the government of the College for sixty-seven 

 years. His life during his retirement was serene and happy, his mind 

 retained its strength and its interest in the affairs of the world until 

 his last illness, and even in those two or three days before his end, 

 the power of expression, rather than that of thinking, gave way. He 

 closed his eyes in peace on the 22d of August, 1867, when "he had 

 reached the age of ninety-four years and nineteen days. 



Perhaps the leading trait of President Day's character was the har- 

 mony of his whole nature, in which you could scarcely say wliat was 

 due to native qualities, what to philosophical training, and what to 

 Christian principle. His mind by nature had certain very valuable 

 traits of the more solid and unpretending sort. Imagination was not 

 remarkable among them, nor was he in any marked degree original, 

 nor could he be called a deeper thinker than many men are. But a 

 person familiar with him would be struck with his uncommon clear- 



