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, commen'cing with 17S9. 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 a 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 and 

 overthrow of all arbitrary governments, and the substitution in their 

 place, of a purely representative system like our own, and thus main- 

 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 occu- 

 pations, was frequently apparent during his residence at College. On 

 a particular occasion, one of the tutors happening to mention some in- 

 teresting philosophical experiment, regretted that he could not exhibit 

 it to his pupils, because the apparatus was out of order, and must be 

 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. 



