strong.] ^-^ [.Tan. 5, 



the institution was one of one uninterrupted respect 

 on his part, and of affectionate confidence on theirs. 

 Knowledge, of course, he acquired, but that was the 

 least of his acquisitions. He acquired the art and the 

 habit of study, with an unfading love for it, and this 

 acquisition was permanent. It continued to be his de- 

 light and a great element of his power until the close 

 of his life. Never for a moment did he make the 

 mistake, into which so many fall, of considering the 

 prunary object of a liberal education to be securing a 

 knowledge of facts, or of arts, or of sciences which 

 might be useful in after life. This knowledge he knew 

 would decay. He sought and he obtained the " art of 

 all arts the best," — that of setting the mind intendy 

 upon a subject of thought, and holding it there until 

 the subject is thoroughly understood. 



This power or art of study which he acquired during 

 his college life, he ever regarded as his most important 

 orain, and many years afterward he-spoke of it as such. 

 Much of what he acquired he said he had lost. His 

 knowledge of the Latin and Greek classics, as well as 

 of the higher mathematics, had fallen away from dis- 

 use, though he had preserved enough to assist his 

 children in their education, "but," he added, "the un- 

 unfading art which I acquired at college was that of 

 study, and if the acquisitions of knowledge I then made 

 by it are faded, or fallen from the surface, * ''' certainly 

 the art or faculty of study has never left me." His 

 appetite for study while he was in college was so 



