Chapter 2: education
- Rank at college -- teaches school -- eyes break down -- leaves college -- correspondence with friends -- Joins Brook Farm
On a bright morning in June, 1839, Charles Dana, then about two months over twenty years of age, left Buffalo for Cambridge, for the purpose of entering Harvard College. Travel in those days was by stage-coach, canal, and steamboat, and was far more difficult and tiresome than now. The annual university catalogues and the faculty records show that Charles Anderson Dana, of Buffalo, matriculated as a freshman without conditions in September, 1839, and that his standing at the end of his first term was seventh in a class of seventy-four, with an aggregate mark of 2246. The maximum is not given, but the highest attained by any member of the class is given as 2421. In view of the fact that Dana had not attended school since he was twelve years of age, and that he had prepared himself for college during such leisure as he had after doing his daily work as a clerk, this result must be counted as quite unusual if not extraordinary. After his first term, Dana was not ranked again, doubtless for the reason “that his work was apparently never quite complete at the end of any other term.” The records show, August 31, 1840, that he was “readmitted to the sophomore class on probation,” and that on September 1st, he (with other sophomores) was permitted
