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OLD DR. NOTT.

KNOWLEDGE has always been in New England the royal road to eminence.

Yankee boys, bound to the high places of the world, usually have a life like this: First we see them on a father's farm, hoeing corn, doing chores, and, in the winter months, floundering through the snow to the district school, where they learn to read, write, and cipher. This stage brings them, perhaps, to their fourteenth year, when something occurs the reading of a book, a conversation with an educated relative or visitor, the coming of a superior teacher—which causes them to fall in love with knowledge. Then, with all the ardor and resolution which distinguish the Yankee race, they proceed to gratify the new-born passion, by devouring all the books procurable in their native county. From desultory reading they advance to systematic study, and so work their way to college, or else enter a house of business, and march on to distinction in a profession or in practical affairs. Sometimes these stalwart, largebrained men unite in themselves the aptitude for acquiring knowledge with a great talent for business, and thus become both learned and rich, both wise and powerful. Isaac Hill, who for many years almost controlled the politics of New Hampshire, and represented that state in the Senate of the United States in General Jackson's time, used to say, that, by the time he was fourteen years old, he had read every book within seven miles of his father's house. Horace Greeley, too, was in the habit of scouring the country far and near, in search of books.

So was it with Dr. Eliphalet Nott, President, for sixty-one years, of Union College, in the State of New York, who died, in the ninety-third year of his age.

Born at Ashford, Connecticut, June 28, 1773,

three years

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before the declaration of independence, ― of parents who cultivated a small and inferior farm, he was left an orphan at an early age, and was brought up to hard farm labor in the family of a relative. This relative, also, was very poor, and the orphan had no kind of external advantage over his companions. On the contrary, in a State where no honest people suffered want, but where few were much above want, Eliphalet Nott was much below the average in point of wordly possessions and prospects. By unremitting toil upon a farm he earned a livelihood,

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no more.

New England has never been so poor, either in purse or in spirit, as not to be both able and willing to impart to the poorest of her children the rudiments of knowledge. This poor lad, therefore, found a common school within his reach a part of every year, and the little that he learned at it gave rise at length to a fiery and unquenchable thirst for knowledge, such knowledge as could not be attained in a remote Connecticut town by a youth without a dollar at his command. Difficulty, which discourages the weak, is inspiration to the strong, and this youth was one of those who generally obtain what they ardently desire. His eldest brother, too, heir to the same poverty as himself, had worked his own way to a learned education, and was then a clergyman, settled in a parish not far off. The early tastes of Eliphalet Nott were not such as to incline him to theology. The natural sciences were his first love, and they were always the natural bent of his mind. If he had been born in a country where theology was less in vogue than it was in the New England of that time, he had probably been only known, if known at all, as a natural philosopher.

As he was working in a field one day in his fourteenth year, brooding over the obstacles in his way to the acquisition of knowledge, and fully resolved upon soon making an effort to surmount them, the doctor of the village chanced to pass along the road. An idea seized the lad. Leaving his farming tools in the field, he followed the doctor to his house, and asked to be taken into his office as a student of medicine. The doctor was unable to comply with this request, but it led to a long conversation, in which the young man made known his secret

longings, and the physician gave him advice as to the manner in which he might proceed to satisfy them. Among other things, he advised him to visit his brother, the pastor of the church in the village of Franklin.

The youth acted upon this advice. His brother received him with a brotherly welcome, and offered him all the assistance in his power. A Connecticut clergyman of that day, with his salary of three hundred dollars a year, or less, and the average clerical family of six children, or more, could not be expected to maintain a hungry, growing brother of fifteen. But he did for him what he could, and gave him what he had to give, namely, a home in his own house, and instruction in Latin and Greek, while the lad earned a little money by teaching a district school.

Four years passed. Early and late he toiled. His perfect temperance, a constitution developed and hardened by labor, a good system of laying out his time, and his burning love of knowledge, enabled him, in that short period, not merely to prepare for college, but to exhaust the whole college course, as then established. At nineteen, he was competent to stand the examination for a degree of Master of Arts, and this degree was actually conferred upon him by Brown University without his having attended college a day. I believe, however, that this rare honor was conferred upon him with the understanding that he would enter the ministry. This vocation he had already chosen, and, after the usual three years' course of study, he was ordained. He was then twenty-two. It was the year 1794, in the second term of Washington's presidency.

The next step of this young man was another proof of his strong, self-confiding character. As no suitable field of labor opened to him in Connecticut, he resolved to pack his saddlebags, mount his horse, and try his fortune in the State of New York, west of Albany, then mostly a wilderness, but rapidly filling up with emigrants. That part of New York which lies between Albany and Utica was then what Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Kansas are now,—that is, the forming, the fillingup region. He did not go alone to this new country. He asked the daughter of a clergyman to go with him and share his

destiny; and, as both father and daughter consented, he bought another horse, and husband and wife set out together. In those simple old days, people did not always find it necessary to wait to be married till they had fought and won the battle of life, but sometimes husband and wife fought the battle together. In every age, however, a strong, valiant, temperate virtuous man, inured to toil, and knowing a profession or trade, may safely marry the instant he finds a girl who is also strong, virtuous, inured to labor, and willing to share whatever fortune has in store for him. These two young people starting out together in quest of a sphere of honorable labor,-what a sublime wedding-trip compared with those now in fashion!

Albany was the first large town at which he halted. He looked about him there, but, observing that a large number of the people still spoke Dutch, he concluded to push on further west. A ride of fifty-five miles brought him to the vigorous new settlement of Cherry Valley, a village just rising among the blackened stumps of the primeval forest. As he had then reached the outpost of civilization in that direction, and as he liked the place and the people, there he determined to remain. Gifted as he was with a lofty and flowing eloquence, his preaching drew around him a large circle of hearers, and I believe he still added to his clerical labors the charge of a school.

He was suffered to remain only two years in the obscurity of a frontier village. The fame of his talents reaching Albany, he was invited to become the pastor of one of its principal churches, and he accepted the invitation.

It was while he held this position that the lamentable duel occurred between Hamilton and Burr. He was personally acquainted with both those distinguished lawyers, who frequently visited Albany in the practice of their profession. Hamilton being the chief and favorite of the Federal party, to which Mr. Nott belonged, the young preacher mourned his fall, both as a national and a private calamity. If any man was Eliphalet Nott's master in eloquence, it was Alexander Hamilton. The same blending of fluency and vigor which marked the pleadings of the great advocate characterized the sermons of the great preacher; and I have no doubt that Mr. Nott heard with rapture

that last great effort of Hamilton, when he pleaded at Albany for the freedom of the press, a few months before his death. The clergy of the country being invited to preach on the practice of duelling, Mr. Nott delivered a sermon which, perhaps, may be pronounced the most eloquent and striking ever delivered in the United States. The special charm of this sermon was, that, while heaping high eulogium upon Hamilton, the author was charitable and even compassionate toward the real victim of the tragedy, Aaron Burr.

"Hamilton,” said the gifted preacher, "yielded to the force of an imperious custom, and, yielding, he sacrificed a life in which all had an interest; and he is lost-lost to his family — lost to us. For this act, because he disclaimed it and was penitent, I forgive him. But there are those whom I cannot forgive. I mean not his antagonist, over whose erring steps, if there be tears in heaven, a pious mother looks down and weeps. If he is capable of feeling, he suffers already all that humanity can suffer suffers, and, wherever he may fly, will suffer with the poignant recollection of having taken the life of one who was too magnanimous in return to attempt his own. Had he but known this, it must have paralyzed his arm while it pointed at so incorruptible a bosom the instrument of death. Does he know this now? his heart, if it be not adamant, must soften; if it be not ice, it must melt. But on this article I forbear. Stained with blood as he is, if he be penitent, I forgive him ; and if he be not, before these altars, where all of us appear as suppliants, I wish not to excite your vengeance, but rather, in behalf of an object rendered wretched and pitiable by crime, to wake your prayers."

This sermon had a prodigious effect at the time. Edition after edition was sold. It had much to do with bringing duelling into disrepute in the Northern States. It had also an important influence upon the career of the author, for it led directly to his being invited to another sphere of labor, in which he spent the remainder of his life.

After a residence of nearly seven years at Albany, Dr. Not was called to the presidency of Union College, an infant inst

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