SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 75 



Professor Abbot. ''His life was gentle, and the elements were 

 so mixed in him, that nature might stand forth and say to all 

 the world, This was a man!" Why did President Abbot have 

 the entire confidence and reverence of the student body to a 

 greater degree than I have known in any other, in all my college 

 experience? He was a great student, and never appeared 

 before his classes except when he was master of the subject he 

 was to present. His deep, strong, but quiet enthusiasm, tem- 

 pered by modesty and simplicity, inspired his students, and I 

 often heard them say: "I would rather flunk in all my other 

 classes than in President Abbot's. " There was no shadow of 

 pretense in his mental make-up, and he was a bold student who 

 would ever venture to palm off anything that was not genuine in 

 President Abbot's lecture-room. How fondly he touched his 

 precious books! To see his reverent handling of books made 

 us all love books the more. How free his great library was to 

 all of us! How doubly careful were we that no spot or stain 

 should mar those sacred volumes while in our care and keeping ! 

 Busy as was his life, whoever remembers the time when he would 

 not eagerly take an hour if he could lift any of us over our troubles 

 and difficulties? His quick, unselfish love for us all left no 

 room for question, and the dullest, most heedless student among 

 us knew that Dr. Abbot was his certain friend. Thus he 

 proved to us "what is the greatest thing in the world." 



How Tennyson, and Milton, and greatest of all, Shakespeare, 

 took on new life as he opened their treasures to our dazed appre- 

 ciation. Lycidas became a gem which we have always treasured, 

 since he revealed its rare polish. Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, 

 and the Merchant of Venice were all transformed as he brought 

 out the rare beauties and the deeper philosophies of those great 

 dramas. Rhetoric and logic and English literature took hard 

 study; yet as he flooded these themes with light, they became 

 fascinating to us, and we wished the recitation hour longer and 

 the time for study not so short. To have known President Abbot 



