10 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1825, 



chemistry, etc., at Hamilton College, lived to over 

 ninety, I think, and through all his later years seemed 

 to be very proud of having been my teacher. I cannot 

 say that I owe much to him, even for teaching me 

 mathematics, which was his forte. My capital memory 

 allowed me to " get my lessons " easily, and that 

 sufficed ; and I had none of the sharp drilling and 

 testing which I needed. He lingers in my memory in 

 another way. He was sharp at turning a penny in 

 various ways ; among them, he for the first year and 

 more jobbed the board of his nephew Eli and myself, 

 who were chums, paying for it in cooking-stoves and 

 the like from Paris furnace, in which through his 

 brother he had an interest, and boarding us round, 

 from one house to another (we had our room in the 

 academy buildings) until the stove which cooked our 

 dinner was paid for. Sometimes our fare was good 

 enough ; but one poor widow, who took us in her turn, 

 fed us so much upon boiled salt cod, not always of the 

 sweetest, that the sight of that dish still calls up an- 

 cient memories not altogether agreeable. I think it 

 was not at that time, but at a somewhat later date, and 

 with less excuse, that we mended our diet upon one 

 occasion, one winter's night, by carrying off the princi- 

 pal's best fowls from the roost, skinning them, as the 

 most expeditious and neatest way, and broiling them 

 in our room as the piece de resistance, for they were 

 tough, in a little supper we got up. 



I here recall a favor which Mr. Avery did me. A 

 year or two after I had taken my M. D., my dear 

 old friend Professor Hadley, of Fairfield Medical 

 College, who had been filling the place at Hamilton 

 College pro tern., made me a candidate for the profes- 

 sorship there of chemistry, with geology and natural 



