Promising, this, for an American youth who was expected to go into business or study a profession!
While at Hurlbut’s school I took lessons in Spanish. There was a Spanish boy from Malaga, a kind of half-servant, half-protégé in a family near us, with whom I practised speaking the language, and also had some opportunity with a few Cubans who visited our family. One of them had been a governor-general. He was a Gallician by birth, but I did not know this, and innocently asked him one day if los Gallegos no son los Irlandeses d’España?—if the Gallicians were not the Irish of Spain—which drew a grave caution from my brother, who knew better than I how the land lay. I really attained some skill in Spanish, albeit to this day “Don Quixote” demands from me a great deal of dictionary. But, as I said before, I learn languages with incredible difficulty, a fact which I cannot reconcile with the extreme interest which I take in philology and linguistics, and the discoveries which I have made; as, for instance, that of Shelta in England, or my labours in jargons, such as Pidgin-English, Slang, and Romany. But, as the reader has probably perceived, I was a boy with an inherited good constitution only from the paternal side, and a not very robust one from my mother, while my mind, weakened by long illness, had been strangely stimulated by many disorders, nervous fevers being frequent among them. In those days I was, as my mother said, almost brought up on calomel—and she might have added quinine. The result of so much nervousness, excessive stimulating by medicine, and rapid growth was a too great susceptibility to poetry, humour, art, and all that was romantic, quaint, and mysterious, while I found it very hard to master any really dry subject. What would have set me all right would have been careful physical culture, boxing, so as to protect me from my school persecutors, and amusement in a healthy sense, of which I had almost none whatever.
Hurlbut’s became at last simply intolerable, and my parents, finding out in some way that I was worse for being there, removed me to a far better school kept by E. C. Wines, who had written books on education, and attained some fame thereby. This was in 1839-’40, and I was there to be prepared for college. We were soon introduced to an old French gentleman, who was to teach us, and who asked the other boys what French works they had read. Some had gone through Telémaque, or Paul et Virginie, Florian, etcetera. The good-goody nature of such reading awoke in me my sense of humour. When it came to my turn, and I was asked, I replied, “La Pucelle d’Orleans and Dictionnaire Philosophique of Voltaire, the Confessions of Rousseau, the Poems of Villon, Charles d’Orleans, Clotilde de Surville, and more or less of Helvetius, D’Holbach, and Condillac.” Here the professor, feeling himself quizzed, cast forth his hands as in disgust and horror, and cried, “Assez! assez! Unhappy boy, you have raked through the library of the devil down to the dregs!” Nor was I “selling” him, for I certainly had read the works, as the records of the Philadelphia Library can in a great measure prove, and did not speak by hearsay.
I had at this time several severe long attacks of illness with much pain, which I always bore well, as a matter of course or habit. But rather oddly, while in the midst of my Transcendentalism, and reading every scrap of everything about Germany which I could get, and metaphysics, and study—I was very far gone then, and used to go home from school and light a pipe with a long wooden stem, and study the beloved “Critic of Pure Reason” or Carlyle’s Miscellanies, having discovered that smoking was absolutely necessary in such reading—[De Quincey required a quart of laudanum to enable him to enjoy German metaphysics]—there came a strange gleam of worldly dissipation, of which I never think without pleasure. I had passed one summer vacation on a farm near Philadelphia, where I learned something in wood-ranging about wild herbs and catching land-tortoises and “coon-hunting,” and had been allowed to hire and ride a horse.
I did not know it, but this horse had thrown over his head everybody who had ever mounted him. He was a perfect devil, but also a perfect gentleman. He soon took my measure, and resolved to treat me kindly as a protégé. When we both wanted a gallop, he made such time as nobody before had dreamed was in him; when he was lazy, he only had to turn his head and look at me, and I knew what that meant and conformed unto him. He had a queer fancy at times to quietly steal up and put his hoof on my foot so as to hurt me, and then there was an impish laugh in his eye. For he laughed at me, and I knew it. There is really such a thing as a horse-laugh. One day we passed through a drove of sheep, and he did not like it—no horse does. After a while I wanted to go by a certain road, but he refused sternly to take it. I found soon after that if I had done so we must have met the sheep again. He had, in fact, understood the route far better than I. I once got a mile out of him in three minutes—more or less; but he had seen me look at my watch, and knew that I wanted to see what he could do. He never did it again. I may have been mistaken here, but it was my impression at the time. Perhaps if I had gone on much longer in intimacy with him I might have profited mentally by it, and acquired what Americans call “horse-sense,” of which I had some need. It is the sixth—or the first—sense of all Yankees and Scotchmen. When I returned to the city I was allowed to hire a horse for a few times from a livery stable, and went out riding with a friend. This friend was a rather precociously dissipated youth, and with him I had actually now and then—very rarely—a glass at a bar and oysters. He soon left me for wilder associates, and I relapsed into my old sober habits. Strange as it may seem, I believe that I was really on the brink of becoming like other boys. But it all faded away. Now it became imperative that I should study in earnest. I used to rise at three or four in the morning. What with hard work and great fear of not passing my matriculation, I contrived to get up so much Latin, Greek, and mathematics, that Mr. Wines thought I might attempt it, and so one fine summer day my father went with me to Princeton. I was in a fearful state of nervous anxiety.
COLLEGE LIFE.
PRINCETON.
We went to Princeton, where I presented my letters of introduction, passed a by no means severe examination for the Freshman’s class, was very courteously received by the professors to whom I was commended, and, to my inexpressible delight, found myself a college student. Rooms were secured for me at a Mrs. Burroughs’, opposite Nassau Hall; the adjoining apartment was occupied by Mr. Craig Biddle, now a judge. George H. Boker was then at the end of his Sophomore year, the term having but a few days to run. He had rooms in college and lived in unexampled style, having actually a carpet on his floor and superior furniture, also a good collection of books, chiefly standard English poets. He at once took me in hand and gave me a character.
Princeton College was entirely in the hands of the strictest of “Old School” Presbyterian theologians. Piety and mathematics rated extravagantly high in the course. The latter study was literally reckoned in the grades as being of more account than all the rest collectively. Thus, as eventually happened to me, a student might excel in Latin, English, and Natural Philosophy—in fact, in almost everything, good conduct included—and yet be the last in the class if he neglected mathematics. There was no teaching of French, because, as was naïvely said, students might read the irreligious works extant in that language, and of course no other modern language; as for German, one would as soon have proposed to raise the devil there as a class in it. If there had been an optional course, as at Cambridge, Massachusetts, by which German was accepted in lieu of mathematics, I should probably have taken the first honour, instead of the last. And yet, with a little more Latin, I was really qualified, on the day when I matriculated at Princeton, to have passed for a Doctor of Philosophy in Heidelberg, as I subsequently accurately ascertained.
There were three or four men of great ability in the Faculty of the University. One of these was Professor Joseph Henry, in those days the first natural philosopher and lecturer on science in America. I had the fortune in time to become quite a special protégé of his. Another was Professor James Alexander, who taught Latin, rhetoric, and mental philosophy. He was so clear-headed and liberally learned, that I always felt sure that he must at heart