Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. | Page 8

tried to imitate
it. His character I do not think was a very well disciplined one at that
time; he was, I believe, "a good hater," a dangerous opponent, yet
withal he had immense self-command. On the whole, he was generally
regarded chiefly as a man of penetrative intellect and sarcastic wit; but
under all this I discerned a spirit so true, so delicate and tender, so
touched [30] with a profound and exquisite, though concealed,
sensibility, that he won my admiration, respect, and affection in an
equal degree. He removed early in life to practise the law in Indiana.
We seldom meet; but though twenty years intervene, we meet as
though we had parted but yesterday. He has been a Judge of the
Supreme Court, and, I believe, the most eminent law authority in his
adopted State; and he would doubtless have been sent to take part in the
National Councils, but for an uncompromising sincerity and manliness
in the expression of his political opinions, little calculated to win votes.
And now came the time for a distinct step forward,--a step leading into
future life.
It was for some time a question in our family whether I should enter
Charles Dewey's office in Sheffield as a student at law, or go to college.
It was at length decided that I should go; and as Williams College was
near us, and my cousin, Chester Dewey, was a professor there, that was
the place chosen for me. I entered the Sophomore class in the third term,
and graduated in 1814, in my twenty-first year.
Two events in my college life were of great moment to me,--the loss of
sight, and the gain, if I may say so, of insight.
In my Junior year, my eyes, after an attack of measles, became so weak
that I could not use them more than an hour in a day, and I was [31]
obliged to rely mainly upon others for the prosecution of my studies
during the remainder of the college course. I hardly know now whether
to be glad or sorry for this deprivation. But for this, I might have been a
man of learning. I was certainly very fond of my studies, especially of
the mathematics and chemistry. I mention it the rather, because the
whole course and tendency of my mind has been in other directions.

But Euclid's Geometry was the most interesting book to me in the
college course; and next, Mrs. B.'s Chemistry: the first, because the
intensest thinking is doubtless always the greatest possible intellectual
enjoyment; and the second, because it opened to me my first glance
into the wonders of nature. I remember the trembling pride with which,
one day in the Junior year, I took the head of the class, while all the rest
shrunk from it, to demonstrate some proposition in the last book of
Euclid. At Commencement, when my class graduated, the highest part
was assigned to me. "Pretty well for a blind boy," my father said, when
I told him of it; it was all he said, though I knew that nothing in the
world could have given him more pleasure. But if it was vanity then, or
if it seem such now to mention it, I may be pardoned, perhaps, for it
was the end of all vanity, effort, or pretension to be a learned man. I
remember when I once told Channing of this, and said that but for the
loss of sight I thought I should have devoted myself to the pursuits of
learning, his [32] reply was, "You were made for something better." I
do not know how that may be; but I think that my deprivation, which
lasted for some years, was not altogether without benefit to myself. I
was thrown back upon my own mind, upon my own resources, as I
should never otherwise have been. I was compelled to think--in such
measure as I am able--as I should not otherwise have done. I was
astonished to find how dependent I had been upon books, not only for
facts, but for the very courses of reasoning. To sit down solitary and
silent for hours, and to pursue a subject through all the logical steps for
myself,--to mould the matter in my own mind without any foreign
aid,--was a new task for me. Ravignan, the celebrated French preacher,
has written a little book on the Jesuit discipline and course of studies, in
which he says that the one or two years of silence appointed to the
pupil absolute seclusion from society and from books too were the
most delightful and profitable years of his novitiate. I think I can
understand how that might be true in more ways than one. Madame
Guyon's direction for prayer to pause upon each