Littlepage Manuscripts: Satanstoe, The Chainbearer & The Redskins (Complete Edition). James Fenimore Cooper

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      Chapter III

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      “Believe me, thou talkest of an admirable conceited fellow. Has he any unbraided wares?”

       “Pr’ythee, bring him in; and let him approach singing.”

      —Winter’s Tale

      I have no intention of taking the reader with me through college, where I remained the usual term of four years. These four years were not idled away, as sometimes happens, but were fairly improved. I read all of the New Testament, in Greek; several of Cicero’s Orations; every line of Horace, Satires and Odes; four books of the Iliad; Tully de Oratore, throughout; besides paying proper attention to geography, mathematics, and other of the usual branches. Moral philosophy, in particular, was closely attended to, senior year, as well as Astronomy. We had a telescope that showed us all four of Jupiter’s moons. In other respects, Nassau might be called the seat of learning. One of our class purchased a second-hand copy of Euripides, in town, and we had it in college all of six months; though it was never my good fortune to see it, as the young man who owned it, was not much disposed to let profane eyes view his treasure. Nevertheless, I am certain the copy of the work was in college; and we took good care to let the Yale men hear of it more than once. I do not believe they ever saw even the outside of an Euripides. As for the telescope, I can testify of my own knowledge; having seen the moons of Jupiter as often as ten times, with my own eyes, aided by its magnifiers. We had a tutor who was expert among the stars, and who, it was generally believed, would have been able to see the ring of Saturn, could he have found the planet; which, as it turned out, he was unable to do.

      My four college years were very happy years. The vacations came often, and I went home invariably; passing a day or two with my aunt Legge, in going or coming. The acquisition of knowledge was always agreeable to me; and I may say it without vanity, I trust, at this time of life, I got the third honour of my class. We should have graduated four, but one of our class was compelled to quit us at the end of junior year, on account of his health. He was an unusually hard student, and it was generally admitted that he would have taken the first honour had he remained. We were thought to acquit ourselves with credit at the commencement; although I afterwards heard my grandfather tell Mr. Worden, that he was of opinion the addresses would have been more masculine and commendable, had less been said of the surprising growth, prosperity, and power of the colonies. He had no objection to the encouragement of a sound, healthful, patriotic feeling; but to him it appeared that something more novel might have better pleased the audience. This may have been true, as all three of us had something to say on the subject; and it is a proof how much we thought alike, that our language was almost as closely assimilated as our ideas.

      As for the Powles Hook Ferry, it was an unpleasant place I will allow; though by the time I was junior I thought nothing of it. My mother, however, was glad when it was passed for the last time. I remember the very first words that escaped her, after she had kissed me on my final return from college, were, “Well, Heaven be praised, Corny! you will never again have any occasion to cross that frightful ferry, now college is completely done with!” My poor mother little knew how much greater dangers I was subsequently called on to encounter, in another direction. Nor was she minutely accurate in her anticipations, since I have crossed the ferry in question, several times in later life; the distances not appearing to be as great, of late years, as they certainly seemed to be in my youth.

      It was a feather in a young man’s cap to have gone through college in 1755, which was the year I graduated. It is true, the University men, who had been home for their learning, were more or less numerous; but they were of a class that held itself aloof from the smaller gentry, and most of them were soon placed in office, adding the dignity of public trusts to their acquisitions—the former in a manner overshadowing the latter. But, I was nearer to the body of the community, and my position admitted more of comparative excellence, as it might be. No one thinks of certain habits, opinions, manners, and tastes, in the circle where they are expected to be found; but, it is a different thing where all, or any of these peculiarities form the exception. I am afraid more was anticipated from my college education than has ever been realized; but I will say this for my Alma Mater, that I am not conscious my acquisitions at college have ever been of any disadvantage to me; and I rather think they have, in some degree at least, contributed to the little success that has attended my humble career.

      I kept up my intimacy with Dirck Follock, during the whole time I remained at college. He continued the classics with Mr. Worden, for two years after I left the school; but I could not discover that his progress amounted to anything worth mentioning. The master used to tell the Colonel, that “Dirck’s progress was slow and sure;” and this did not fail to satisfy a man who had a constitutional aversion to much of the head-over-heels rate of doing things among the English population. Col. Follock, as we always called him, except when my father or grandfather asked him to drink a glass of wine, or drank his health in the first glass after the cloth was removed, when he was invariably styled Col. Van Valkenburgh, at full length; but Col. Follock was quite content that his son and heir should know no more than he knew himself, after making proper allowances for the difference in years and experience. By the time I returned home, however, a material change had been made in the school. Mr. Worden fell heir to a moderate competency at home, and he gave up teaching, a business he had never liked, accordingly. It was even thought he was a shade less zealous in his parochial duties, after the acquisition of this fifty pounds sterling a-year, than he had previously been; though I am far from insisting on the fact’s being so. At any rate, it was not in the power of £50 per annum to render Mr. Worden apathetic on the subject of the church; for he continued a most zealous churchman down to the hour СКАЧАТЬ