650 JAMES ELLIOT CABOT. 



belonged to a family originating in the island of Jersey and coming 

 early to Salem, Mass. Elliot Cabot's father was also named Samuel, 

 while his mother was the eldest child of Thomas Handasyd Perkins and 

 Sarah Elliot ; the former being best known as Colonel Perkins, who 

 gave his house and grounds on Pearl Street toward the foundation of the 

 Blind Asylum bearing his name, and also gave profuse gifts to other 

 Boston institutions; deriving meanwhile his military title from having 

 held command of the Boston Cadets. Elliot Cabot was, therefore, born 

 and bred in the most influential circle of the little city of that date, and 

 he dwelt in what was then the most attractive part of Boston, though 

 long since transformed into a business centre. 



His summers were commonly spent at Nahant, then a simple and 

 somewhat primitive seaside spot, and his childhood was also largely 

 passed in the house in Brookline built by Colonel Perkins for his 

 daughter. Elliot Cabot went to school in Boston under the well-known 

 teachers of that day, — Thayer, Ingraham, and Leverett. When twelve 

 years old, during the absence of his parents in Europe, he was sent to a 

 boarding-school in Brookline, but spent Saturday and Sunday with 

 numerous cousins at the house of Colonel Perkins, their common »rand- 

 father, who lived in a large and hospitable manner, maintaining an 

 ampler establishment than is to be found in the more crowded Boston 

 of to-day. Personally he was a man of marked individuality, and I re- 

 member hearing from another of his grandchildren an amusing account 

 of the scene which occurred, on one of these Sunday evenings, after the 

 delivery of a total abstinence sermon by the Rev. Dr. Channinrr, of 

 whom Colonel Perkins was one of the leading parishioners. The whole 

 theory of total abstinence was then an absolute innovation, and its procla- 

 mation, which came rather suddenly from Dr. Chanuing, impressed 

 Colonel Perkins much as it might have moved one of Thackeray's 

 English squires ; in so much that he had a double allowance of wine 

 served out that evening to each of his numerous grandsons in place of 

 their accustomed wine-glass of diluted beverage, and this to their visible 

 disadvantage as the evening went on. 



Elliot Cabot entered Harvard College in 1836 as Freshman, and 

 though he passed his entrance examinations well, took no prominent 

 rank in his class, but read all sorts of out-of-the-way books and studied 

 natural history. He was also an early reader of Carlyle's '"Sartor 

 Resartus," then just published ; and was, in general, quite disposed to 

 pursue his own course in mental culture. He belonged to the Hasty 

 Pudding Club and to the Porcellian Club, but spent much time with his 



