IN THE NEW ENGLAND ATMOSPHERE- 1851-1853 531 



students as follows: &quot;My young friends, you doubtless 

 noticed a mistake in my final remarks. I said slo-o-o-o- 

 broch ; of course I meant pi-i-g-a-a-an. &quot; 



Then, too, it must be confessed that some of the week 

 day prayers made by lay professors lent themselves 

 rather too easily to parody. One of my classmates 

 since known as a grave and respected judge was espe 

 cially gifted in imitating these petitions, with the very 

 intonations of their authors, and these parodies were in 

 great demand on festive occasions. The pet phrases, the 

 choice rhetoric, and the impressive oratory of these pray 

 ers were thus made so familiar to us in caricatures that 

 the originals were little conducive to devotion. 



The influence at Yale of men like Goodrich, Taylor, 

 Woolsey, and Porter, whom I saw in their professors 

 chairs, was indeed strong upon me. I respected and ad 

 mired them ; but their purely religious teaching took but 

 little hold on me ; I can remember clearly but two or three 

 sermons which I heard preached in Yale chapel. One was 

 at the setting up of the chapel organ, when Horace Bush- 

 nell of Hartford preached upon music ; and another was 

 when President Woolsey preached a baccalaureate ser 

 mon upon &quot;Righteous Anger. &quot; The first of these ser 

 mons was very beautiful, but the second was powerful. It 

 has had an influence and, I think, a good influence on 

 my thoughts from that day to this; and it ought to be 

 preached in every pulpit in our country, at least once a 

 year, as an antidote to our sickly, mawkish lenity to crime 

 and wrong. 



In those days conformity to religious ideas was carried 

 very far at Yale. On week-days we had early prayers at 

 about six in the morning, and evening prayers at about 

 the same hour in the afternoon ; but on Sundays we had 

 not only morning and evening prayers in the chapel, but 

 morning and afternoon service at church. I attended St. 

 Paul s Episcopal church, sitting in one of the gallery pews 

 assigned to undergraduates ; but cannot say that anything 

 that I heard during this period of my life elevated me es- 



