LETTER FROM PROFESSOR PORTER. 343 



his friends with an expression of genuine pleasure at the 

 meeting. His presence in any circle kindled a pleasant 

 warmth, and shed an additional brightness ; and his disap- 

 pearing from this academic community in which he was 

 through so long a life an essential element, is like the going 

 out of a cheerful and cheering household fire. 



There are many other things which I might say, but I 

 will not prolong my letter, already perhaps too long. 



FROM PROFESSOR NOAH PORTER. 



MY first knowledge of Professor Silliman was in 1827, 

 when he examined me in Geography for admission to Yale 

 College. He was then forty-eight years old, tall, erect, of 

 a fair complexion, and with benignant expression, carefully 

 and even elegantly dressed, very dignified, and yet very 

 attractive in his manners. I was greatly impressed by the 

 extent of his knowledge, the rapidity of the movements of 

 his mind, the affability of his address, and the great kind- 

 ness of his heart. He was the presiding officer of the Board 

 of Examiners at that time and for many years, and there 

 are doubtless hundreds of the graduates of the College who 

 can recall similar impressions of his graceful dignity, and 

 his unaflfecied kindness, on an occasion which is always 

 memorable and trying. The next occasion, when he made 

 a very strong impression upon my thoughts and feelings, 

 was at the delivery of a few familiar lectures to the class, 

 not many weeks after our admission to the College. We 

 were summoned to the laboratory, to us a most mysterious 

 apartment, made impressive by the manifold and multiform 

 arrangements of furnaces, retorts, and crucibles, to hear 

 the Professor discourse to us, in respect to the College life 

 to which we had so recently been introduced, the life so 

 peculiar in its evil and its good, and advise us in respect 

 to our manners and our morals. The topics of his lectures 

 were miscellaneous, our personal habits, our diet, our 

 sleep, methods of study and reading, the use of tobacco 



