Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 10.

[p. 7] loomed large in the eyes of the world. He had just been sent to Saint Helena, and the question was whether he could escape. We find that two students expressed their beliefs in this record of a wager. There is no record whether the dinner was held.

Bet with C. Brooks that Napoleon Bonaparte will escape from the Island of St. Helena before the first of August, A. D. , 1819; a good dinner at our class meeting.

November 12, 1815.
Samuel D. Bell.¹

This date in August, 1819, was chosen because that was the month in which Commencement exercises were then held. Brooks took good rank in his course, and on graduation continued his theological studies at Harvard. In the month mentioned in the record of the wager he took his Master's degree and delivered the valedictory in Latin. This paper is still preserved.

In November, 1820, he was invited to become pastor of the Third Church at Hingham at a salary of a thousand dollars, and here he remained until January, 1839, a period of eighteen years. Time permits only the mention of the activities of this enthusiastic young pastor, who did not confine his work alone to his church and his parish. And in these enterprises and undertakings he was the leader. The first year of his ministry he wrote a family prayer book, of which there were eighteen editions published. A Boston merchant bought two thousand copies, which in 1846 he had distributed widely through the publishers, the donor's name not being given.

He established a Sunday-school—then a novel feature—a parish reading society, was the founder and secretary of the Old Colony Peace Society. In fact, he appears to have been the secretary in most of the societies with which he was connected. He was active in the Plymouth County Bible Society, and the year he