84 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER* 



make even the shortest off-hand speech to the students all 

 the more singular in a practised orator his occasional 

 absorption of mind, leading him to hand you his sand-box 

 instead of the leave of absence he had just dried with it, 

 the old-fashioned courtesy of his, i Sir, your servant, as he 

 bowed you out of his study, all tended to make him popular. 

 He had also a little of what is somewhat contradictorily called 

 dry humour, not without influence in his relations with the 

 students. In taking leave of the graduating class, he was in 

 the habit of paying them whatever honest compliment he 

 could. Who, of a certain year which shall be nameless, will 

 ever forget the gravity with which he assured them that they 

 were the best-dressed class that had passed through college 

 during his administration ? How sincerely kind he was, how 

 considerate of youthful levity, will always be gratefully re 

 membered by whoever had occasion to experience it. A 

 visitor not long before his death found him burning some 

 memoranda of college peccadilloes, lest they should ever rise 

 up in judgment against the men eminent in Church and State 

 who had been guilty of them. One great element of his 

 popularity with the students was his esprit de corps. However 

 strict in discipline, he was always on our side as respected 

 the outside world. Of his efficiency, no higher testimony 

 could be asked than that of his successor, Dr. Walker. Here 

 also many reforms date from his time. He had that happiest 

 combination for a wise vigour in the conduct of affairs, he 

 was a conservative with an open mind. 



One would be apt to think that, in the various offices which 

 Mr. Quincy successively filled, he would have found enough 

 to do. But his indefatigable activity overflowed. Even as a 

 man of letters, he occupies no inconsiderable place. His 

 History of Harvard College is a valuable and entertaining 

 treatment of a subject not wanting in natural dryness. His 

 * Municipal History of Boston, his History of the Boston 

 Athenaeum/ and his Life of Colonel Shaw have permanent 

 interest and value. All these were works demanding no 

 little labour and research, and the thoroughness of their 

 workmanship makes them remarkable as the by-productions 

 of a busy man. Having consented, when more than eighty, 

 to write a memoir of John Quincy Adams, to be published in 

 the * Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 

 he was obliged to excuse himself. On account of his age ? 



