not furnish envied notoriety, and there was not the least social or official toleration of a lazy, dissolute character. The non-resistance doctrines of the Garrison and the peace party were not welcome to me whose blood leaped in a warm, youthful challenge. Such were the collegians without base ball, yacht recreation, or gymnasium; but with a hand fire-engine there was diversion in quickening the step, or lowering the hauteur of pretenders; occasionally giving a sprinkle, if not a forced ablution to a flunk in our impromptu debates, which were both novel and serviceable. There was a class of inceptive pedagogues who were primed for a First of August emancipation, or a Fourth of July address; Henry B. Stanton, of our creed and clan, being the model orator, and Theodore Weld, the radical oracle.

It was the day of the ecclesiastical excommunication of temperance and abolition agitators. Runaway slaves and pro-slavery mobs furnished food for morbid appetites, and Birney, the Kentucky emancipator, became a lion in the path, rather than a mere diversion to the leaders who were in a Presidential race with Polk and Clay, rivals in subserviency to the slaveholding power.

It is history that the hobbies of Oneida Institute furnished what became the horses on which politicians afterward compla cently rode to place and power, oblivious of those who once stood in the breach with heroism, to rescue our trailed flag and honor from the jeers of the world. In that whirl there was a fascination. I found more diversion in debates and in the writing of colloquies for exhibitions, than in severe studies. In Greek and Hebrew I made fair progress only, and graduated without a diploma, only because the State Regents, to punish radical innovation, had denied the Board of Trustees power to confer degrees. Thus for the honorary degree of A. M., I was indebted to the favor of Middlebury College, Vermont, some years later.

Among the heroic and notable men of their time, stands a remarkable trio. Each in his own sphere was a power: Green, the scholar; Stewart, the legal genius; Smith, the millionaire-philanthropist; so they are classed to-day.

THE DISTINGUISHED TRIO.

Gerrit Smith, of Peterboro, N. Y., was a distinguished patron and ardent friend of President Green, and a frequent speaker

before the students of Oneida College, a Hamilton College scholar of distinction, a patron in the heirship of townships and lands, and a generous, active philanthropist, all conspiring to throw about him the glamour of a real hero. I never heard a finer toned, mellifluous voice, nor was he less striking in elegance of person and gentlemanly suavity. It was in resisting pro-slavery mobs and in defence of freedom of speech, that he came first to be the champion of human rights, and made choice of the society of common people, rather than to dwell in the seclusion of his palace, which he closed, and later gave to a dissenting congregation for worship, choosing a humbler home with leisure for greater service to reform. The proffer of a senatorship or of a governor's chair, was no attraction; and it was only on the dawn of a new era that he assented to serve in Congress, developing a versatile speaker, an original and bold legislator. It was an idiosyncrasy in his character to abjure the maxim that "consistency is a jewel," taking pride in those moral perceptions which made it a truism "He who never changes his opinion never corrects mistakes." That he was the Chesterfield radical of his day, is cognate to the fact that he was the wealthiest American of the munificent givers to education and the cause of temperance and freedom. His epitaph might read: "The cause which he knew not he searched out." Wealth never ministered to pride, defeat never embittered the spirit, hushed his voice, or enfeebled his blows. In boldness, he was the companion of Horace Greeley, in going on the bail bond of Jefferson Davis, who became a huge political elephant, long imprisoned, when demanding a trial. Secretly he was the patron of John Brown in Kansas (I have it from Brown's own lips), but of the purposed raid in Virginia he was not aware. Mr. Smith gave

thousands of acres of land to make homes for colored people, and died in 1874, leaving a son, Mr. Green Smith, named for his friend, and a daughter, Mrs. Miller, of Utica, New York.

Alvin Stewart, of Utica, a witty, eloquent and retired lawyer and reformer, was a character. A few of his hits, passing like good currency among the students, I may give prefatory. At the conventions, on calls for donations, his tact and drollery would be known with a solemn look and magisterial presence. When taking names for donations, a colored student came up with a fivedollar contribution. "Your name, sir?" "Prime, is the name." "A prime gentleman whose paper wants no indorsement." Next,

Freeman, a jet black: "This is to be the cognomen of your racea little off color just now." The city of Utica came up with its mob spirit. "This is not the poetic 'pent-up Utica'; our scoundrels only burnish their fame on departure." Then court wit is remembered. The question was as to ownership and discovery of a spring. The counsel had not the most savory reputation; thereupon Mr. Stewart asked: "Suppose Satan had appeared in person. and claimed he had taken the first drink from the spring, and employed my learned counsel to enforce his claim, as I have no doubt he would, could that be called a precedent, a law, to keep out my Christian client?" This character was given to a defendant: "Whatever his family or profession, don't overlook his misfortune as that of a peripatetic somnambulist and wanderer up-stairs and down-stairs and in the lady's chamber'." Mr. Stewart's appearance at our college and as president of state temperance and anti-slavery conventions, brought an ovation, and made variety where the voices of the eloquent, elegant Stanton, the solemn Goodell, the logic of Green, and the rotundity of Gerritt Smith were heard and seen. His elegant palatial home, variegated in color by stale mobocratic eggs, had an owner who towered then justly above all other notables of that city whom I afterward knew-Governor Seymour, Senators Kernan and Conkling, and Justice Ward Hunt-as did his house above theirs, less conspicuous in that early epoch. Great as they were, they can never be named more than the peer of Stewart as a hero, nor have they left more striking proofs of an orator. Mr. Stewart, in early days, often addressed the State Legislature on radical politics. In Vermont, the old men remember him by this incident: the question was up of forbidding slaveholders to retain a claim on their chattels while in the North. He was in the State House by the mountain range, and apostrophised: "Slavery in Vermont! Clanking of chains on the soil where Seth Warner and Ethan Allen sleep? No!" Pausing and looking out of the window, "Your old mountains would hold their breath and refuse to send forth an echo of your degradation!" He died too soon, without witnessing the fruition of his hopes, yet not to be forgotten.

President Beriah Green was of this noted triumvirate. He gained his collegiate education in Vermont, and was for years a pastor, until called to a professorship in Western Reserve College. A striking, pleasant face, and vivacious manners, were in happy

association with the scholar, in deep sympathy with the spirit of Goethe, the philosophy of Coldridge, also that of an ardent friend and correspondent of the English rugged Carlyle. His protest against the ethics of the "tall ecclesiastics" was more than verbal-even a close personal alliance with great reform, disregarding obloquy and sacrifice. A spirit genial as the summer sun, proven integrity, varied learning, and eloquence reaching sublimity, would have made him a striking character in the best circles of citizens and reformers. With him, work had little less virtue than worship. More than theories were held in regard to the value of manual labor. He practiced as an exemplar, earning bread by the sweat of his brow. Character was a product won by sacrifice at the "roaring loom of time." An incident in society would become the basis of a sermon, and students, alike with veteran agitators and scholars, would crowd to hear the more than transcendental oracle, a preacher with a text, "Duty, stern daughter of the voice of God." In his career, there was proof of the lion heart, for he knew no failure; and, waiting for the bright day of the emancipation, he fell as he lived, while making a speech against the licensing of saloons, at the post of duty, in 1874. If his life was not an epic, neither was his career one of ambition, like a Cambyses, marching through the desert to awaken the screams of hungry vultures, leaving no monument but a Golgotha heap of human sacrifices-nay, it was of a white-winged evangel pleading for the poor, and for Justice in the temple where Liberty, with the weeds of widowhood, had long stood crownless. The humorous incidents related of this great character and family, were many. An old student, meeting the President in after years, leaning on his hoe, and wearing a high, old-fashioned hat, heard a young son, with much gravity, while violently knocking off the hat, say: "Have I not told you repeatedly not to be seen with that old hat on again, especially in company?" The reproof was: "What do you mean, John, by such rudeness?" At breakfast, after a juvenile spat, possibly discipline, one of the boys was called on for his table verse in the round, and muttered, "I'm a brother to dragons and a companion to owls-in the daytime." On a special occasion, a stranger student was called on to pray, and he offered so long and loud a supplication that there was less devotion than merriment on the seats. Mr. Green followed him in the most subdued tone with his elegant and sarcastic reproof, "We thank thee,

O Lord, that Thou art not deaf!" My mature judgment is, that Mr. Green came out "separate" too early. Inside there was room for his genius, courage and eloquence. Church and nation were asleep.

It should be mentioned that a few were specially favored by the kind attentions of the President and family. In such a spiritual atmosphere, and with its elevated conversation, the social powers were developed for a larger usefulness in later days. Sabbath after Sabbath was spent among the outlying churches and Sabbathschools in such efforts as not only became a valued help to them, but also developed in us that readiness of utterance and individuality of thought that were so absolutely essential in preparation for usefulness. The equipment of the Institute with a printing press, upon which the Friend of Man was published, gave a knowledge of affairs such as are associated with the press everywhere.

The favorite recreation of the students was in impromptu debates. Scores of questions would be put into a hat, and drawn out for the speaker after he had been called to the platform and introduced by the presiding officer of the society. It was a mental pastime that tested the boys, and gave a strength that comes with such wrestling and mental encounter. The stimulus that it gave to general reading and ready wit was indispensable, though the contestants knew it not.

In all departments of the Institute the criticisms were of the freest, and every man was compelled to become bold for the truth; that was taught as ranking above all else. Thus, in all directions, bodily, mental and spiritual, by manual labor, the dialectics of the lyceum, and the cultivation of a profoundly reverent regard for the truth, the students were being symmetrically equipped for the service of humanity, that has never had a reformer too many, nor a well-wisher who could be spared.

In later years, a former editor of the Friend of Man has thus voiced his recollections of the boy, Grinnell; recollections called out by an article upon the Iowa pioneer's relation to sheep-raising in the State of Iowa. It was Wesley Bailey, editor, and father of Senator Bailey, of Decorah, Iowa, who wrote the following editorial twenty-five years ago, after inviting the youth to a partnership:

"We are not only interested in sheep-raising, but we also feel an interest in the above-named Grinnell. We knew him when a student in Oneida Institute,