A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 109 



forever tremble with a sentiment of such sweet regret. 

 We set great store by what we had, and cannot have 

 again, however indifferent in itself, and what is past is 

 infinitely past. This is especially true of college life, 

 when we first assume the titles without the responsibili- 

 ties of manhood, and the President of our year is apt to 

 become our Plancus very early. Popular or not while 

 in office, an ex-president is always sure of enthusiastic 

 cheers at every college festival. Mr. Quincy had many 

 qualities calculated to win favor with the young, — that 

 one above all which is sure to do it, indomitable pluck. 

 With him the dignity was in the man, not in the office. 

 He had some of those little oddities, too, which afford 

 amusement without contempt, and which rather tend to 

 heighten than diminish personal attachment to superiors 

 in station. His punctuality at prayers, and in dropping 

 asleep there, his forgetfulness of names, his singular in- 

 ability to make even the shortest off-hand speech to the 

 students, — all the more singular in a practised ora- 

 tor, — his occasional absorption of mind, leading him to 

 hand you his sand-box instead of the leave of absence he 

 had just dried with it, — the old-fashioned courtesy of 

 his, " Sir, your servant," as he bowed you out of his 

 study, — all tended to make him popular. He had also 

 a little of what is somewhat contradictorily called dry 

 humor, not without influence in his relations with the 

 students. In taking leave of the graduating class, he 

 was in the habit of paying them whatever honest com- 

 pliment he could. Who, of a certain year which shall 

 be nameless, will ever forget the gravity with which he 

 assured them that they were " the best-dressed class that 

 had passed through college during his administration " f 

 How sincerely kind he was, how considerate of youthful 

 levity, will always be gratefully remembered by whoever 

 had occasion to experience it. A visitor not long before 



