LIFE OF JAMES DWIGHT DANA 



about the time of Dana, and with Professors Josiah W. 

 Gibbs, Edward E. Salisbury, Thomas A. Thacher, and 

 James Hadley, gave fresh distinction to the college in the 

 domain of ancient letters. 



In the Reveries of a Bachelor, Ik Marvel (Donald G. 

 Mitchell) has sketched the older professors of this period 

 in language which is as true as a Rembrandt etching. It 

 has been read over and over again by Yalensians who were 

 in college during the forties and fifties but like a good 

 sonnet, the more often it is repeated the better it sounds ; 

 so no apology will be made for its introduction here. 



" I happened only a little while ago to drop into the 

 college chapel of a Sunday. There were the same hard 

 oak benches below, and the lucky fellows who enjoyed a 

 corner seat were leaning back upon the rail, after the old 

 fashion. The tutors were perched up in their side-boxes, 

 looking as prim and serious and important as ever. The 

 same stout Doctor * read the hymn in the same rhythmi- 

 cal way ; and he prayed the same prayer, for (I thought) 

 the same old sort of sinners. As I shut my eyes to listen, 

 it seemed as if the intermediate years had all gone out ; 

 and that I was on my own pew-bench, and thinking out 

 those little schemes for excuses or for effort, which were 

 to relieve me or to advance me, in my college world. 

 There was a pleasure like the pleasure of dreaming 

 about forgotten joys in listening to the Doctor's ser- 

 mon : he began in the same half-embarrassed, half-awk- 

 ward way ; and fumbled at his Bible-leaves, and the poor 

 pinched cushion, as he did long before. But as he went 

 on with his rusty and polemic vigor, the poetry within 

 him would now and then warm his soul into a burst of 

 fervid eloquence, and his face would glow, and his hand 

 tremble, and the cushion and the Bible-leaves be all for- 

 got, in the glow of his thought, until with a half-cough, 

 and a pinch at the cushion, he fell back into his strong 

 but treadmill argumentation. 



In the corner above was the stately, white-haired pro- 

 fessor^ wearing the old dignity of carnage, and a smile 



* Rev. Prof. E. T. Fitch. f Prof. Benjamin Silliraan. 



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