10 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1825, 
chemistry, etc., at Hamilton College, lived to over 
ninety, I think, and through all his later years seemed 
to be very proud of having been my teacher. I cannot 
say that I owe much to him, even for teaching me 
mathematics, which was his forte. My capital memory 
allowed me to “get my lessons” easily, and that 
sufficed ; and I had none of the sharp drilling and 
testing which I needed. He lingers in my memory in 
another way. He was sharp at turning a penny in 
various ways; among them, he for the first year and 
more jobbed the board of his nephew Eli and myself, 
who were chums, paying for it in cooking-stoves and 
the like from Paris furnace, in which through his 
brother he had an interest, and boarding us round, 
from one house to another (we had our room in the 
academy buildings) until the stove which cooked our 
dinner was paid for. Sometimes our fare was good 
enough ; but one poor widow, who took us in her turn, 
fed us so much upon boiled salt cod, not always of the 
sweetest, that the sight of that dish still calls up an- 
cient memories not altogether agreeable. I think it 
was not at that time, but at a somewhat later date, and 
with less excuse, that we mended our diet upon one 
occasion, one winter’s night, by carrying off the princi- 
pal’s best fowls from the roost, skinning them, as the 
most expeditious and neatest way, and broiling them 
in our room as the pice de résistance, for they were 
tough, in a little supper we got up. 
I here recall a favor which Mr. Avery did me. A 
year or two after I had taken my M. D., my dear 
old friend Professor Hadley, of Fairfield Medical 
College, who had been filling the place at Hamilton 
College pro tem., made me a candidate for the profes- 
sorship there of chemistry, with geology and natural 
