[24]
Give my best remembrances to my namesake and every other who asks or thinks of me.
This letter is signed in
Greek characters,
Danaos, which was his college nickname.
It was followed by one from
Cambridge dated October 29, 1840, to
Barrett, which tells the story of his work:
... When I tell you what and how much I have to do, you won't think very badly of me. We have four recitations a week in Latin, of an hour each, four in Greek, three in rhetoric, three in German, three in French, and two in history, with a written exercise in Latin or Greek every week and one in German, besides a theme every fortnight.
The classical lessons are long enough to satisfy the most desirous of “getting ahead.”
Thus you see we are constantly enough occupied.
The faculty work us so that we may have no time for mischief --and they seem to have hit on the right plan — the college was never quieter.
I suppose you are busy rejoicing over “Whig victories,” and looking forward confidently to the end of corruption and misrule.
I trust you may not be disappointed, but my hope is not altogether without fear.
It seems to me that the measures of this election [Harrison's] might make any one fear, though he regards them from a nearer point of view and very much more in the whirlpool than I.
Shall we not go from hot to hotter?
Will not succeeding elections require still greater ‘excitements’ and more tremendous machinery?
I am aware that these things are called “expressions of public opinion,” and “manifestations of indignation” at bad government, but I don't believe it. As the courts say (with a slight alteration), “God send us good deliverance.”
You say truly that this is hallowed ground.
Even the outward air of things tell you that.
I thought when I first came into the college grounds on my return that I had never before seen their beauty.
It was a sunny afternoon, and the trees in the yard had lost none of their summer leaves.
I could almost have fancied myself in Academus.
To go into
