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VOL. XXIX.

THE TUFTONIAN

OCTOBER, 1903

No. 1

PROFESSOR BENJAMIN G. BROWN

PRESIDENT ELMER H. CAPEN

I first became acquainted with Professor Brown when he was acting as a tutor in mathematics. I was a student in the Harvard Law School, and made my home with Professor Tweed. Mr. Brown was a student in the Lawrence Scientific School. He had a beautiful gray mare that he was accustomed to ride in going to Cambridge, which he kept in Professor Tweed's stable. I was taking care of Professor Tweed's horse, and hence we met three times a day in Professor Tweed's stable. A very delightful acquaintance and friendship sprang up between us. I frequently visited him in his rooms in East Hall, where he was quartered as a proctor, and I came to have the highest appreciation of his ability and promise. After I left the Law School, our paths diverged, and I saw almost nothing of him until I came to Tufts College as president. He welcomed me with the utmost cordiality, and that early 'friendship which we had formed in the period of the War of the Rebellion was renewed. From the beginning of my work as president to the time of his death, the intimacy continued without interruption.

It would be difficult in a brief article to give an adequate estimate of a man of so many varied characteristics and such charming personality. The one thing that impressed itself upon me most strongly in the beginning was his breadth of view, accompanied by solidity of judgment. I have rarely known a man who seemed to have the faculty to such a degree of seeing a subject in all its bearings and relations. The last twenty-five years have been marked by greater changes, not only in educational methods, but in the conception of the content and aim of education itself, than have been witnessed in many centuries before. Necessarily these changes have been under careful consid

eration and sharp discussion in the faculty of Tufts College. Sometimes the problems presented have been very intricate and perplexing. I think it would be the judgment of all those who have sat in the faculty with him that Professor Brown's judgments have generally been clearer and more accurate than those of any other one man. I say this without a thought of disparagement of the judgment of a very wise body of men.

Professor Brown's ability as a teacher was remarkable. He would not claim for himself, nor can any one claim for him, that he was a great mathematician, but he understood his subject thoroughly. He taught with great enthusiasm and relish the most advanced of his pupils, and there have been many who havé reached distinction in the mathematical world, some of whom received all of their formal training from him. But his highest distinction was the ability to awaken the interest of dull pupils, to make them see the steps of mathematical procedure, and come finally to have real pleasure in mathematical study. The value of his work in this respect cannot be overestimated. By the circumstances attending his early engagement as a teacher in Tufts College, mathematics became his specialty, but he might easily have made a specialty of a number of other subjects quite apart from the mathematical field. He had already achieved success in the preparation of young men for college before he came here. His training in the classical languages had been thorough, and his fondness for them continued through his life. But when I have recognized the breadth of his reading in classical English authors, his wonderful appreciation of the beauties of English literature, his fondness for all the great masters of our English speech, and the accuracy of his critical judgment, I have been unable to suppress a regret that he could not have turned his attention in the direction of English, and so spent his life as a teacher of that subject.

Although Professor Brown spent almost the whole of his active life in college dealing with college questions and in training college students, his interest in education was not restricted by his daily occupations. His first years were spent in the preparation of pupils for college in his native town. He took a deep interest in the public schools of Somerville, and for many years

rendered important service upon the school committee. Indeed, so great was his service in these respects, and so highly appreciated by his fellow-citizens, that the city has given his name to one of the latest of its beautiful new schoolhouses.

He was a man of warm and tender sympathies. He took an interest especially in those who were struggling for the means of education. For a number of years he has served upon the committee of scholarships and aids, canvassing with painstaking effort the condition and needs of nearly every applicant. So great was his desire to smooth the way for young men of promise who needed assistance that he made a special effort some two years ago to increase the means of aiding young men in the college. The plan which he outlined was a brilliant one, but he was interrupted in his purpose to make the plan effective by the failure of his health. It is significant that in the very last hours of his life his mind turned again to this conception which had so completely mastered him, and that his very last public utterance on Tufts Night should have related to the means of assisting more completely and generously those in Tufts College who were striving in narrow circumstances to accomplish the ends of the higher education.

There is one other point which I should not neglect to mention. I refer to his religious convictions. He was an extremely modest man, and shrank instinctively from revealing the deep currents of his life. Those, however, who came into close contact with him could not fail to be impressed with the spirit of reverence in his disposition and his firm reliance in the mysteries of existence on the infinite Providence that guides and sways us. His reading, for the most part, was along serious lines. He was a constant attendant upon Sunday worship, and a devout and appreciative listener. No one could be brought into close relations with him without having his religious aspirations kindled and his faith strengthened.

From first to last, his service in Tufts College has been a boon not only to the institution, but to those who have enjoyed the privileges of his classroom. His record has been completed, and it is a noble one. He now becomes a part of the history of the school which his service has so largely helped to form.

THE EMERSON RELICS

CHARLES HOSEA TEMPLE

However much we may disbelieve, and strive to overcome by force of reason what seems a foolish fancy, there is in all of us that which encircles the good and the great with a halo of awe and reverence, an irradicable strain of hero-worship (in spite of the inveighing of Mr. Carlyle), which colors our thoughts when, from the distance, we contemplate what these same heroes have done for the edification of the world and left, "monumentum aere perennius."

The old statement, "Distance lends enchantment," no doubt finds an apt application in this instance, as in many others, for when, by good fortune, one sees and knows the surroundings of those whom he reverences, present contact dispels the haze of the imagination, and he views with sane eyes and impartially what before the fantastic fancy could but distantly picture. And this, it would seem, is as it should be, for when the being of the imagination has passed away, the true, living, breathing man appears, and with the appearance, not his separation from the whole of humanity, but his essential likeness even to us. To be truly a man is the most glorious honor even of the greatest. Emerson forms no exception.

Among the master minds of the world, Emerson has already taken his place, and the veneration in which he is held, not by his own little New England alone, but by the whole literary world, was attested by the recent celebration, held in his native town of Concord, in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Among the numerous collections of Emerson relics gathered by reverent followers of the seer of Concord, one perhaps not of the last importance and interest is to be seen in a spot not many miles from his home, in the library of Tufts College, to whose young men Emerson once lectured, a collection brought together by those who knew and loved him. Herein to a wonderful degree do we see Emerson the man apart from the more well-known Emerson the writer.

The collection, for the most part, consists of letters written by Mr. Emerson, on various topics and occasions, to those who had the good fortune to know him intimately, and of manuscripts, photographs, books, etc., of great interest.

Among the many and valuable letters herein contained, the following attracts our attention: Mr. Emerson has been presented by a friend with a copy of the "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius, in response to which he writes of the work, among other things: "It is a noble ornament of a book-house, and suggests grand ideas." Another, written at the time when the English poet, Arthur Clough, was visiting America, asks our American poet, Mr. Longfellow, to "meet Mr. Clough at the Tremont House to dine," an invitation which, in all probability, Mr. Longfellow gladly accepted. Another letter reveals to us the true Emerson and his knowledge of himself in a delightful way. Writing, manifestly, in reply to a request for a speech at some place, he characteristically says: "Much experience has taught me to be very cautious in making speeches in behalf of any cause to which I have a good will"; and again: "But if I were at liberty, an enterprise such as you suggest is quite foreign to my habits or power. I live solitary in the country, because I have not skill to talk to people and draw them to my views." (Involuntarily one's mind goes back to the old Second Church, in Boston.) "Mr. Phillips has genius for this, and I delight in his devotion to it."

As we pass over the letters, our eye falls upon a frayed and cracked piece of pasteboard, which proves, on investigation, to be a curious old blue ticket announcing that it will admit the bearer to a course of lectures to be delivered at Chickering's rooms, 268 Washington street, the subject to be the "Philosophy of the People."

Of the photographs, those of the most interest are one of the less common King's bust, and another, in the quaint old style of picture, of Mr. Emerson himself, taken at his prime, standing, and with his hands crossed, a characteristic attitude with himso say they who knew him-assumed before entering upon the body of his discourse.

The manuscript of the collection consists in the address delivered by Mr. Emerson at the funeral of his friend, Major George L. Stearns, of Medford, and a copy of the "Boston Hymn," which Mr. Emerson read at the home of Major Stearns, in Medford, on the evening of January 1, 1863, after the distinguished company had returned from the historic celebration of

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