206 Memoir of the Life of Eli Whitney. 
We have already mentioned, that Mr. Whitney entered Yale Col- 
lege, at the mature age of twenty three years. He had enjoyed but 
little intercourse with men of learning, and the state of elemen- 
tary education, in the part of the country where he passed his 
minority, was unfavorable to his acquiring a knowledge of polite 
literature ; and while a member of college he seems to have de- 
voted more attention to the mathematics, and especially to me- 
chanics, theoretical as well as practical, than to the ancient classics. 
Among his files are found most or all of the compositions and dispu- 
tions which he wrote during this period, commencing with 1789. The 
compositions are frequently characterized by great vividness of im- 
agination, and the disputations by sound and correct reasoning. At 
this time of life, indeed Mr. Whitney exhibited an imagination some- 
what poetical; his prose compositions had something of this vein, 
and he occasionally wrote verses. The written disputations found 
among his papers, are more than twenty in number. Some of them 
were read before the President, (the late Dr. Stiles,) and others were 
exhibited in the literary society to which he belonged. Their titles 
indicate the topics that were agitated by the students of that day. 
The subjects discussed were oftener political than literary. The 
writers partook largely of the enthusiasm which pervaded all ranks 
of our countrymen. They exulted in their release from @ foreign 
yoke, and boasted of.the victory they had achieved over British arms: 
They extolled the matchless wisdom of the new government, and 
contrasted its free spirit with the tyranny of most of the governments 
of the old world, and its youthful vigor with those moldering fabrics. 
With a spirit somewhat prophetical, they anticipated the decline am 
overthrow of all arbitrary governments, and the substitution in theit 
place, of a purely representative system like our own, and thus mallr 
tained, (what is now even more probable than it was then,) that 
this government was set up to be a model to all the nations of the 
earth. 
The propensity of Mr. Whitney to mechanical inventions and occlr 
pations, was frequently apparent during his residence at College: Os 
a particular occasion, one of the tutors happening to mention some?” 
teresting philosophical experiment, regretted that he could not exhibit 
it to his pupils, because the apparatus was out of order, and must 
sent abroad to be repaired. Mr. Whitney proposed to undertake 
this task, and performed it greatly to the satisfaction of the Faculty 
of the College. 
