CHAPTER LXI 



IN LATER YEARS 1856-1905 



ON my return to America I remained for a short time 

 as a resident graduate at New Haven, and there 

 gained a friend who influenced me most happily. This 

 was Professor George Park Fisher, at that time in 

 charge of the university pulpit, an admirable scholar 

 and historian. His religious nature, rooted in New Eng 

 land orthodoxy, had come to a broad and noble bloom 

 and fruitage. Witty and humorous, while deeply thought 

 ful, his discussions were of great value to me, and our 

 long walks together remain among the most pleasing 

 recollections of my life. He had a genius for conversa 

 tion ; in fact, he was one of the two or three best conver 

 sationists I have ever known, and his influence on my 

 thinking, both as regards religious and secular questions, 

 was thoroughly good. While we did not by any means 

 fully agree, I came to see more clearly than ever what a 

 really enlightened Christianity can do for a man. 



I had returned to America in the hope of influencing 

 opinion from a professor ? s chair, and my dear old friend 

 Professor afterward President Porter urged me to 

 remain in New Haven, assuring me that the professor 

 ship of history for which I had been preparing myself 

 abroad would be open to me there. A few years later 

 a professorship at Yale was offered me, and in a way 

 for which I shall always be grateful ; but it was not the 

 professorship of history: from that I was debarred by 

 my religious views, and therefore it was that, having 



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