764 GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR. 



On looking through the Commencement Day programme for 1845, a pro- 

 gramme which gave among the new features lately introduced the de- 

 partments in which each graduate took honors, we find that Senator Hoar, 

 whose Commencement part lay among the " disquisitions," the lowest 

 grade of rank, was credited only with Latin and Greek as the basis of 

 his rank, such as it was. Now all experience indicates, I believe, that 

 the department of study which a man thinks really important is that one 

 for which he himself has a fancy. Some of you may have known, years 

 ago, the German, Baron Osten Sacken, the celebrated entomologist, 

 stationed in Cambridge for a time, who always complained that he had 

 made a fatal mistake in his career through rashly taking the whole of the 

 diptera, or two-winged insects, for his scientific task, whereas to take 

 charge of a single genus would have been enough, he thought, for the life- 

 work of a judicious man of science ; personally he should have preferred 

 the mosquito. 



After leaving the Law School, Mr. Hoar established himself in 

 Worcester, Mass., then a city of remarkable activity of mind and 

 independence of thought. Going thej:e myself four years later, I recog- 

 nized him, of course, as one of the leaders of tlie young men, though less 

 conspicuously so, I think, than he seems to himself to have been, his 

 narrative still rather omitting the orchestra. I remember clearly that 

 Mr. John Milton Earle, editor of the " Worcester Spy," and then recog- 

 nized as the leader among the older men in politics and journalism, 

 placed others among the young lawyers, especially the one who after- 

 wards became Judge Nelson, far above Hoar. This of course lies 

 beyond my province. But the defect I find in Senator Hoar's picture 

 of that day is that he overlooks the most remarkable historic transforma- 

 tion, I think, which ever occurred in a Massachusetts town. 



Up to about that time Worcester had simply afforded a fine example 

 of the old-fashioned, high-bred, well-organized Massachusetts community. 

 It was ruled with dignity by what was called the Chandler blood, — 

 the Lincolns, the Salisburys, the Waldos, and one or two kindred house- 

 holds. In a short time a change passed over it, almost as if by magic, 

 with the enormous influx of manufacturers. The Abolitionists, the tem- 

 perance zealots, the social reformers generally, began to congregate there. 

 From being another Quincy it became another Lynn. The Public Li- 

 brary sprang up and a lecture system, a Natural History Society, a gym- 

 nasium ; the young men of the town became athletic and interchanged 

 cricket games and baseball games with other towns. Tlie neighbor- 

 hood of those fine old radicals, Stephen and Abby Foster, made it a 



