Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

[70] forms of logic and of Locke's philosophy with the criticisms of the French eclectics upon it; a smattering of history and political economy; some crude acquaintance with field natural history; some practice in writing and debating; a passion for poetry and imaginative literature; a voracious desire for all knowledge and all action; and an amount of self-confidence which has now, after more than half a century, sadly diminished. It will be seen that this was an outfit more varied than graduates of the present day are apt to possess, but that it was also more superficial; their knowledge of what they know being often far more advanced as well as more solidly grounded than was mine. No matter; I was a happy boy, ankle-deep in a yet unfathomed sea.

I had two things in addition not set down in the college curriculum, but of the utmost influence on my future career. One of these has always been to me somewhat inexplicable. Cambridge was then a place of distinctly graded society,--more so, probably, than it is now. Lowell has admirably described the superb way in which old Royal Morse, the village constable and auctioneer, varied the courtesy of his salutation according to the social position of his acquaintance. I can remember no conversation around me looking toward the essential