Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

[51] part in it: a thought would sometimes flash into his mind, and he would begin to work it out on the blackboard before our eyes; forgetting our very existence, he would labor away with the chalk, writing out with lightning rapidity a series of equations, smaller and smaller, chasing his scientific prey down into the utmost right-hand corer of the blackboard, and finally turning to us with a sigh when the pursuit was ended. Again was the science of mathematics being created before our very eyes; it was like being present at the first discoveries of some old Greek or Arabian geometrician. Peirce had also the delightful quality of being especially interested in all of this his first voluntary class, and indeed of greatly overrating their merits. When I left college, he gave me an indorsement which took my breath away, and had me placed, at eighteen, on the examining committee in his department. Years after, when in a fair way to pass some time in jail after an anti-slavery riot, I met him, and said that I had reserved that period of imprisonment for reviewing mathematics and reading Laplace. His fine eyes kindled, and he replied, “In that case, I sincerely hope that you may go there.” He was then vehemently opposed to the abolitionists, and it seemed a double blessing to gag one of