350 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



of tutors by the ceremony of a public assent to the Con 

 fession of Faith and Form of Church Government agreed 

 upon by the Say brook Synod in 1708, a method of in 

 auguration which was used while I was in College, and 

 sometime afterwards, except when the tutor elect hap 

 pened to be an approved dissenter from that form of gov 

 ernment, in which case the ceremony was dispensed with. 

 The other was the use of Morse's " Geography " as a book 

 to be recited, of which I have a feeling remembrance to 

 this day, remembering well the bulk of the volumes, 

 but too little of what was in them. I find myself, there 

 fore, to have passed through College just at the era at 

 which Dr. Porter thought he passed through, namely, 

 when the great improvements were about to be introduced ; 

 for my classmate, President Woolsey, was the last tutor 

 inaugurated by the ancient ceremony, and I think my class 

 was the last that recited the " Geography." (Professor 

 Lyman here remarked that the study was discontinued in 

 1825.) 



I remember vividly the first glimpse I ever had of Pro 

 fessor Silliman, whose name I remember from my early 

 childhood. It was in Hartford, just after the close of the 

 war with Great Britain. One of the first fruits of the 

 peace, at least one of the first to make a deep impres 

 sion on a boy of thirteen years, was, that a queer-look 

 ing foreigner, an Italian, I believe, with English words 

 enough to buy and sell, a strange personage in those 

 times, came along, and opened a shop for a little while 

 in Hartford. He had in his window what seemed a won 

 derful assortment of prints, some of them representing 

 famous buildings. But what was a still greater attraction 

 to the school-boys, he sold torpedoes, little wads of 

 paper filled with fulminating powder, and exploding with 

 out fire when thrown upon the ground. I was gazing at 

 that attractive shop-window one day, when two gentlemen, 

 passing along, stopped for a moment. One of them was Mr. 



