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128 18 College Days If there is one occupation more than another to which I never took kindly, it is the sawing of wood. Chopping, on the other hand, I have really enjoyed and I have had plenty of it. I had more than plenty of wood sawing, that first Winter in Rochester. My first roommate, for a short time only, was a young law student named Brand, and after him came another, a rough country fellow named Titus B. Eldredge. Of Brand’s after career I never knew much, but Eldredge went to New York, attained success, and I saw a great deal of him in later days. Of the ordinary incidents of student life, there is very little to be said. They are of a well-known pattern. The university was fairly well equipped, for a young one, and it had the foundations of a fine library in which were many books that were new to me. Among these were works on architecture and they opened a field of especial interest in which I dug pretty deeply. The faculty were all first-class men in their way, or ways. The president, Dr. Martin B. Anderson, was just the man for the extremely arduous task which he had undertaken, that of building up a brand-new concern. My own studies never brought me under his personal care to any extent, except in History, of which he was the professor. He taught me how to read history, how to use a library, and put into me a good deal of enthusiasm concerning the old days of the world. By some accident or other, perhaps, my seat was just opposite his in the classroom, when I at last got up to it, and he formed a habit, at the beginning of each of his admirable lectures, of half closing his eyes and calling upon me for a digest of the day’s field of operation. The other boys voted that I was the most useful man in the 129 college days class, for I delivered them all from the necessity of looking at their textbooks before they came in. It may be that he believed that I was more in sympathy with his fad than that indicated. Professor Dewey, Chemistry, was no other than my old childhood veneration , the principal of the now departed “Institute,” in which I had begun my Latin, at six, perched upon a high stool to reach the level of my desk. The Latin professor, Richardson, was full of that ancient tongue and any fellow might readily get it out of him. In Greek, the country was believed to contain few scholars who were at all the equals of Professor Kendrick, and he did his teacher work faithfully. Our mathematical professor, Mr. Quimby, had been professor of mathematics at West Point, and was all that could be asked for. He was afterwards a Major General in the army, during the Civil War.1 In modern languages, we had Tutor Mixer, said to be entirely competent, but I was under him but a short time in French. During the vacations of that year and at the end of it, I was at home, aiding my father in his office, especially as a collector, in which line he was himself not any too good. The whole year passed in a continual effort to keep my expenditures within the limits of my limited and sadly irregular remittances, for my father was spending all he was making and was still carrying a heavy church load. One of the first of my college experiences was the customary search by the upper class men for members of their secret societies. I carried all of our crowd into the Alpha Delta Phi and thereby earned much disapprobation from those who were left out and from the rival societies. In any merely electoral contest, I might thereafter count upon adverse votes enough to defeat me, but was consoled by the consideration that I could even more surely defeat anybody else. That society contest, however, brought me two lifelong friends, at least. One was John R. Howard, afterwards of the firm of Fords, Howard & Hulbert, who published my Lincoln.2 The other was Manton Marble, who became the editor and manager of the New York World. He was the somewhat too distinguished manager of Hon. Samuel J. Tilden’s political campaign in the great historic contest for the presidency between him and Rutherford B. Hayes...

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