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filled with his own loved department of study, that he did 
not value college honors enough to give the needful atten- 
tion to other branches. 
“Tn his sixteenth year Joseph determined to take a pedes- 
trian excursion. He set out to visit an uncle residing twenty 
or thirty miles north of us, and his father furnished him 
with all he thought needful for so short a trip. He had 
always kept us informed of his movements when away; and 
when six days had passed, and we received no intelligence 
from him, we began to be seriously uneasy. At length a 
letter came, mailed in Charlestown, Mass. He had heard 
Mason and Sirs talk about a mechanic in Ware, who 
had given them much information about casting mirrors for 
telescopes, and had long wished to see the man for himself. 
So, after tarrying one night at his uncle’s, he had wended 
his way up. to Ware, and having learned all he could from 
the man he sought, had proceeded on foot to Charlestown, a 
distance of 175 miles, in order to visit Bunker Hill.” 
In 1843, he graduated at Yale College. For a few 
months he remained at home pursuing his favorite studies, 
mathematics and astronomy; and in the following winter he 
taught for a while in a classical school. Early in 1844, he 
went to Philadelphia, as an assistant of WaLKER, who was 
then beginning his astronomical labors, and whose attention 
had been attracted by the bright promise of the earnest and 
gifted youth. Here the contagious zeal of WALKER added 
fuel to the flame. Removed for the first time from the re- 
straining influence of home, on which he had learned uncon- 
sciously to depend, he forgot all prudent care for 
ie observed with WALKER at the High-School Cieccmunie 
all night, and computed all the day,—and I need not add 
that his health soon gave way. From that time he was 
subject to a nervous excitability before unknown to him, and 
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