Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography | Page 4

several members who
have since made a deep mark in church and commonwealth. Professor
Archibald Alexander Hodge was one of us. He inherited the name and
much of the power of his distinguished father. Also General Francis P.
Blair, who rendered heroic service on the battle-field. John T. Nixon
brought to the bench of the United States Court, and Edward W.
Scudder brought to the Supreme Court Bench of New Jersey, legal
learning and Christian consciences. Richard W. Walker became a
distinguished man in the Southern Confederacy. Our class sent four

men to professor's chairs in Princeton. My best beloved classmate was
John T. Duffield, who, after a half century of service as professor of
mathematics in the University, closed his noble and beneficent career
on the 10th of April, 1901. I delivered the memorial tribute to him soon
afterward in the Second Presbyterian Church in the presence of the
authorities of the University. Another intimate friend was the Hon.
Amzi Dodd, ex-chancellor of New Jersey and the ex-president of the
New Jersey Life Insurance Company. He is still a resident of that State.
During the past three-score years it has been my privilege to deliver
between sixty and seventy sermons or addresses in Princeton, either to
the students of the University or of the Theological Seminary, or to the
residents of the town. The place has become inexpressibly dear to me
as a magnificent stronghold of Christian culture and orthodox faith, on
the walls of whose institutions the smile of God gleams like the light of
the morning. O Princeton, Princeton! in the name of the thousands of
thy loyal sons, let me gratefully say, "If we forget thee, may our right
hands forget their cunning, and our tongues cleave to the roofs of our
mouths!"

CHAPTER II
GREAT BRITAIN SIXTY YEARS AGO
_Wordsworth--Dickens--The Land of Burns, etc_.
The year after leaving college I made a visit to Europe, which, in those
days, was a notable event. As the stormy Atlantic had not yet been
carpeted by six-day steamers, I crossed in a fine new packet-ship, the
"Patrick Henry," of the Grinnell & Minturn Line. Captain Joseph C.
Delano was a gentleman of high intelligence and culture who, after he
had abandoned salt water, became an active member of the American
Association of Science. After twenty-one days under canvas and the
instructions of the captain, I learned more of nautical affairs and of the
ocean and its ways than in a dozen subsequent passages in the
steamships.

On the second morning after our arrival in Liverpool I breakfasted with
that eminent clergyman, Dr. Raffles, who boasted the possession of one
of the finest collections of autographs in England. He showed me the
signature of John Bunyan; the original manuscript of one of Sir Walter
Scott's novels; the original of Burns' poem addressed to the parasite on
a lady's bonnet, which contained the famous lines:
"Oh wad some power the giftie gie us To see our sel's as others see us,"
besides several other manuscripts by the same poet, and also the
autograph of a challenge sent by Byron to Lord Brougham for alleged
insult, a fact to which no reference has been made in Byron's biography.
From Liverpool, with my friends Professor Renwick and Professor
Cuningham, I set out on a journey to the lakes of England. We reached
Bowness, on Lake Windermere, in the evening. The next morning we
went up to Elleray, the country residence of Professor Wilson
("Christopher North"), who, unfortunately, was absent in Edinburgh.
We hired a boatman to row us through exquisitely beautiful
Windermere, and in the evening reached the Salutation Inn, at the foot
of the lake. My great interest in visiting Ambleside was to see the
venerable poet, Wordsworth, who lived about a mile from the village. I
happened, just before supper, to look out of the window of the
traveller's room and espied an old man in a blue cloak and Glengarry
cap, with a bunch of heather stuck jauntily in the top, driving by in a
little brown phaeton from Rydal Mount. "Perhaps," thought I to myself,
"that may be the patriarch himself," and sure enough it was. For, when
I inquired about Mr. Wordsworth, the landlord said to me, "A few
minutes ago he went by here in his little carriage." The next morning I
called upon him. The walk to his cottage was delightful, with the dew
still lingering in the shady nooks by the roadside, and the morning
songs of thanksgiving bursting forth from every grove. At the summit
of a deeply shaded hill I found "Rydal Mount" cottage. I was shown, at
once, into the sitting-room, where I found him with his wife, who sat
sewing beside him. The old man rose and received me graciously. By