THE BEGINNING OF HIS WORK AS PROFESSOR. 123 



all the windows, one third, or half, and even two thirds 

 in some of them. At once I saw that it would never an- 

 swer, and I made my appeal to the Corporation at their 

 next meeting. I invited them to visit the room, to which 

 there was no practicable access except through a hole or 

 scuttle in the roof of the arch. A ladder was therefore 

 raised from below, or let down from above, and, Crusoe- 

 like, the grave and reverend gentlemen of the Corporation 

 descended, as Robinson did into his den, and arrived safely 

 on the floor. President Dwight, Rev. Dr. Ely, Hon. James 

 Hillhouse, and his venerable father, then fourscore or more, 

 and others, members of the College Senate, found 

 themselves in a gloomy cavern, fifteen or sixteen feet be- 

 low the surface of the ground, into which, especially as 

 there was as yet no trench excavated around the outside of 

 the building, little more light glimmered than just enough 

 to make the darkness visible. 



To see was to be convinced. I had no difficulty in per- 

 suading the gentlemen that the model arch of boards must 

 be entirely knocked away, the stone pillars removed, and 

 the space opened freely to the roof, of the room, which 

 should be finished square up to the ceiling, like any other 

 large room. It was indeed to be regretted that several 

 hundred dollars had been worse than thrown away upon 

 the preposterous arch. How did it happen ? I suppose 

 that Mr. Bonner, an able civil architect, as I have already 

 said, had received only some vague impressions of chemis- 

 try, perhaps a confused and terrific dream of alchemy, 

 with its black arts, its explosions, and its weird-like mys- 

 teries. He appears, therefore, to have imagined, that the 

 deeper down in mother earth the dangerous chemists could 

 be buried, so much the better ; and perhaps he thought 

 that a strong arch would keep the detonations under, al- 

 though, as an architect and engineer, he would of course 

 know that the arch, when pressed from above, grows 

 stronger until it is crushed ; but, struck from below, its 



