NATHANIEL THAYER. 441 



lages and towns since their first settlement looked up for the best 

 instruction and the most faithful guidance in all the uobler interests of 

 life. His gravity and serenity of look and mien gave him a sort of 

 Washingtonian dignity. He belonged to a fellowship of divines very 

 remarkable in their period for weight of professional character, en- 

 larged liberality of views, thorough scholarly culture, and a high tone 

 of life, — including such men as Kirkland, Freeman, Buckminster, 

 Thacher, Bancroft, Channing, and Ware. He was for many years the 

 sole minister of a town of about two thousand inhabitants, and was held 

 in true esteem and love by all his people. Probably no higher or purer 

 gratification could have been afforded him, could he have had the fore- 

 knowledge or assurance of it, than that among the venerable halls of 

 the College where he had sjient years of happy and faithful pupilage 

 the filial devotion of a son would rear one that should bear his name. 



At a time when the high price of board at Cambridge pressed very 

 heavily on the poorer students, Nathaniel Thayer performed for the 

 College another service most needful and helj^ful, in jDroviduig a place 

 and means for such students as wished to avail themselves of a com- 

 mons hall for boarding at low cost. He enlarged considerably, and 

 in large part furnished, the former station of a branch of the Fitch- 

 burg Railroad in Cambridge, as the Thayer Commons Hall. This 

 was in 1865, and it was successfully occupied for ten years, till Memo- 

 rial Hall gave to the students a splendid new room for that purpose. 

 It was understood that Mr. Thayer expended more than $8,000 in 

 securing and fitting his Commons Hall. Its affairs were managed by 

 the students who there took their meals, the expense to them being 

 simply the cost of the materials for their food, and its preparation. 

 Many of the students who sat at those tables were doubtless the guests 

 of the host. 



It was substantially in the service of the University that Mr. Thayer 

 so generously assumed the whole cost of Professor Agassiz's vigorous 

 and most fruitful visit of exploration and research to South America, 

 known as the " Thayer Expedition." This was in the interests of 

 high science, and it has proved the basis of and incitement to advanced 

 stages already reached, and of infinite progress still inviting its pupils. 

 It is believed that the only hesitancy in facing the known and possible 

 obligations to which Mr. Thayer committed himself in this enterprise 

 was in his humorous lament to Professor Agassiz as to the enox'mous 

 amount of alcohol needed to prepare the fishes of which he appeared 

 to empty the ocean. 



The relations between Mr. Thayer and Professor Agassiz were those 



