XI 



Mr. Pickering entered the University at a juncture when all his 

 strength of principle and all his wisdom were needed to guide him 

 through the trying scenes that awaited him. The tempests of ex- 

 citement and disorder swept over his class, in their Sophomore 

 year, prostrating numbers of them apparently as strong as him- 

 self. Expulsion, rustication, suspension, all followed in rapid 

 succession, for offences to which nothing could have prompted the 

 student but those maddening stimulants, the plague of which no 

 one then knew how to stay. Pickering's virtuous sensibility was 

 outraged by the terrific ravages of this moral plague, as he mani- 

 fested at the time by a characteristic expression of his abhorrence, 

 — quoting those emphatic lines of Virgil: — 



" Non, mihi si linguoc centum sint oraque centum, 

 Ferrea vox, omnes scelerum comprendere formas 



possim." 

 It was at this period that the late Judge Lowell, then one of 

 the corporate body of the University, declared the exalted senti- 

 ment, that, rather than endure such evils among the students, he 

 would send them off till he had made college a perfect chasm, and 

 then start anew on the right ground. 



Pickering's moral indignation, however, bore no unkindness to 

 his offending fellow-students. His heart teemed with sentiments 

 of candor, generosity, and true honor. Nothing of the ascetic or 

 recluse appeared in his disposition or manners. He mingled freely 

 with his classmates in their pleasures and sports, their "jests and 

 youthful jollities," insisting only, that, so far as he was concerned, 

 they should be innocent and proper. And this was a condition ex- 

 acted by his very nature, unconsciously as it were to himself. 

 His simplicity and singleness of heart were as remarkable as his 

 purity and elevation of mind. He joined the various social as well 



