1864.] REMINISCENCES OF AMHERST COLLEGE. 341 



has produced much suffering. I am not sure, however, but it has 

 been a merciful check upon my disposition to over-work, and 

 thereby has tended to lengthen out my life and ability to labor. 

 If so, how thankful I ought to be for it ! 



"But Providence had better things in store for me in a variety 

 of respects, to which this trying failure of my eyes and blasting of 

 my plans and hopes would introduce me. To say nothing of 

 spiritual blessings, new fields of science were thus to be opened to 

 me, where wonders yet more attractive awaited me. My eyes 

 failed in the spring of 1814, and for two years darkness that might 

 be felt rested upon my prospects. Still I could not give up study, 

 and tried all manner of ways to make some progress. In 1816, 

 the Trustees of Deerfield Academy ventured to commit that Insti- 

 tution to my care ; where for three years I labored intensely to 

 maintain myself, in spite of a defective education, weak eyes, and 

 poor health. It was at this time that I commenced study for the 

 Christian ministry, having been led by my trials to feel the infinite 

 importance of eternal things, and the duty of consecrating myself 

 to the promotion of God's glory and man's highest good. There, 

 too, at first, chiefly as a means of promoting health, my attention 

 was turned to Natural History. About that time Professor Amos 

 Eaton had been lecturing at Amherst, and we became acquainted 

 with him, and I always regarded him as the chief agent of intro- 

 ducing a taste for these subjects in the Connecticut Valley. Dr. 

 Stephen W. Williams, Dr. Dennis Cooley, and myself, all of Deer 

 field, took hold of mineralogy and botany wdth great zeal. Dr. 

 Cooley and myself collected nearly all the plants, phenogamous and 

 cryptogamous, in the Valley. Dr. Cooley became an excellent 

 botanist; and even to a recent date, when he died in Michiaan, 

 had pursued the subject with zest. Dr. Williams afterwards 

 became Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in the Berkshire 

 Medical School. 



'' I ought also to state a few facts which formed a part of my 

 education, and which served to diminish the evils of a self-taught 

 course. I have already referred to the benefits which I derived 

 from being for many years a leading member of a debating society. 

 I there had an opportunity to practice extempore speaking and 

 composition, and to acquire facility in philosophical reasoning, prob- 

 ably to a ten times greater extent than does a student in college. 

 It was also an admirable discipline I was compelled to go through 

 when called to instruct in the academy in Deerfield. As ther* 



Vol. I. X No. 5. 



