fund, while Rev. Samuel Lockwood, D. D., at his death in 1791, left $1,122 for the library, in addition to his previous gifts. For the library, previous to this, in 1777, Rev. Thomas Ruggles, of Guilford, had left £10,2 and in 1787 Rev. John Erskine, of Edinburg, gave 120 volumes. In 1783, Jacob R. Riviera of Leicester, Mass., gave to the college a portrait of President Stiles's learned Hebrew correspondent, Rabbi Hagim Isaac Carigal.3 In 1790 Noah Webster, the lexicographer, gave an annual premium. for the best composition, as "an encouragement to the study of the English language."4 PHI BETA KAPPA. In President Stiles's time was brought to Yale the first of its existing societies. On December 5, 1776, just after the Declaration of Independence, some students of William and Mary College, in Virginia, meeting at the Apollo Hall of the old Raleigh tavern at Williamsburg, formed the first American college fraternity. From this beginning has sprung the society life of most of our colleges and the later organizations have patterned after their prototype far more closely than they now know or admit. The influence of the society has been the most potent one which went forth from the old college in tidewater Virginia. The founders of BK had at first no design of extending the society beyond their college. After a year or so a plan was considered of extending it through the different colleges of the State, but there was no idea of founding branches in other States till a Yale man appeared, Mr. Elisha Parmele, who had studied for two years at Yale, and then went to Harvard, where he graduated in 1778. In the fall of the following year he went South for his health, which was failing. He stopped at Williamsburg, met the BK men there, and became charmed with them and their society. A grand idea was evolved. It was, that, by establishing branches of this secret society in the different colleges of the country, mutual aid would be given in literature and the educated men in the various sections of the country, being knit together by ties of friendship, would draw more closely together the several States of the great nation which had just been founded. So the men at William and Mary, calling their chapter the Alpha of Virginia, gave to Mr. Parmele two charters, dated December 4, 1779, to establish "meetings" of their fraternity at "the two New England universities," Harvard and Yale. Returning home, he initiated four Yale men at his home in Goshen, Conn., on April 4, 1780, and on November 13, 1780, established at Yale the Alpha of Connecticut, by initiating twelve graduates and several seniors and juniors. A year later, on September 5, 1781, the Alpha of Massachusetts was estab 'Dexter, Yale University, 43. 2 * Yale Book, 1, 185. 3 Baldwin's Yale College. Yale Book, I, 110. lished at Harvard. The mother chapter perished in the Yorktown campaign of 1781; but its two daughters grew and flourished. The meetings were held fortnightly, and in later years, when interest waned, monthly at 6:30 P. M., in winter. At them were delivered orations; debates and at times convivial meetings were held, at which "the juice of Bacchus" flowed. The initiation supper was held annually, till 1835, when it cost $150, and the faculty abolished it as being too expensive. In September, 1787, began the long series of B Korations and poems at commencement, which were formerly so prominent a feature of that occasion. They were delivered by such men as Edward Everett. Many of these orations and poems were printed, and from 1835 to 1871 there was no break in the celebration. In 1808, the chapter issued its first catalogue, and its last, in 1852, contained the names of 1,700 members. Great jealousy of the society was manifested by outsiders at the first, and they "feloniously took, stole, and carried away the society's trunk with all its contents," December 19, 1786, and July 20, 1787. About 1830, owing to the anti-masonic excitement, the secrecy of the society was dissolved. It took in at first one-half, and after a very few years, one-third of the class, and gradually became a society of "high stand men," taking always those who stood first in scholarship. As new societies came in, it lost importance and finally was dissolved in 1871.1 In 1884 it was revived, and now, taking the men who receive a philosophical or high oration at either junior or senior appointments, it sup plies a want in the college. Many a man has his exertions at his studies inspired and spurred on by a desire to get one of those coveted ap pointments, which only about one-seventh of the class attain, so as to be able to bear the badge of scholarship, the BK key. The society provides for the college an excellent course of lectures during the winter months. PRESIDENT STILES'S LAST DAYS. During this presidency, in 1778, graduated Joel Barlow, poet and diplomatist; Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the United States Treasury and governor of Connecticut, and Prof. Josiah Meigs. In the class of 1779 were Jeremiah G. Brainerd, judge in Connecticut's supreme court, and Elezur Goodrich, Congressman, and later professor of law in the college. Governor Roger Griswold was in the class of 1780. Chancellor James Kent, Judges Simeon Baldwin, of Connecticut, and Daniel Farrand, of Vermont, and Israel Smith, governor of the last-named State, were all graduates of 1781. S. T. Hosmer, chief justice of Connecticut, and Ashur Robbins, United States Senator, graduated in 1782, and a year later Rev. Samuel Austin, president of Vermont University, was Four Years at Yale, 224-234. Yale Book, 1, 334. in the graduating class with Judge David Daggett, United States Senator and head of the law school for many years; Rev. Abiel Holmes, D. D., the well-known historian of that day, author of the "American Annals" and biographer of President Stiles; Rev. Jedediah Morse, whose large two-volumed geography was the authority for many years in the United States, Rev. R. S. Storrs, and John Cotton Smith, the last governor of Connecticut under the old colonial charter. Ray Greene, United States Senator from Rhode Island, was an alumnus of 1781, and Samuel Huntington, governor of Ohio, with his successor, Return Jonathan Meigs, who was also Postmaster-General, left Yale a year later. In 1786 graduated Stanley Griswold, United States Senator from Ohio, and in 1787, Rev. Azel Backus, first president of Hamilton College; Christopher Ellery, United States Senator from Rhode Island; Gideon Granger, Postmaster-General, and Abraham Nott, judge of South Carolina's supreme court. In 1788 the class contained in its numbers James Lanman, United States Senator from Connecticut; Jeremiah Mason, who held the same position from New Hampshire, and John Wordsworth, attorney-general of New York. Seventeen hundred and eighty-nine was the year of graduation of John T. Peters, judge of the Connecticut supreme court, and John Stearns, M. D., a noted physician in New York. The celebrated divine, Rev. Edward Dorr Griffin, president of Williams College, and Samuel Jones, judge of the supreme court of New York, were graduated in 1790. Stephen Elliott, the botanist of South Carolina; Judge James Gould, a professor in the famous Litchfield Law School, and Gen. Peter B. Porter, Secretary of War, were in the class of 1791. In 1792 graduated Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin; William Marchant, judge of Rhode Island's supreme court; Roger M. Sherman, and Asa Chapman, who held the same honor in Connecticut; James C. Eaten, on whom the same honor was conferred in Bermuda, and William Botsford, also a judge of the supreme court of New Brunswick. Truly a judicial class. Rev. Jeremiah Atwater, first president of Middlebury College, and later president of Dickinson College, was graduated in 1793. John Elliott, United States Senator from Georgia, was a year later, in the class with Ezekiel Bacon, Comptroller of the United States Treasury, Thomas S. Williams, chief judge of the Connecticut supreme court, and Rev. Andrew Yates, professor of logic and ethics at Union College. In 1795 the last class of the administration of President Stiles graduated Rev. Jeremiah Day, who was later to be himself president of the college, and Mathew B. Talmadge, United States district judge for New York. During the whole of this period one is struck with the number of eminent names among Yale's alumni. Proficiency in mathematics was the recognized test of scholarship.' 'Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, 1, Harpers, 30, 700. Toward the end of President Stiles's term of office' skepticism and infidelity were very prevalent, and many of the students were infected with the doctrines of Voltaire, Rousseau, and D'Alembert. It has even been stated that but one student was a Christian when President Dwight assumed his office, though that is doubtless an exaggeration. The morals of the students were said to have become worse than formerly. On May 12, 1795, after a died of a malignant fever. short illness of four days, President Stiles In the word's of Yale's latest historian He had devoted his matured powers, unremittingly, for seventeen years in a difficult time, to the service of the college, and had seen it advance steadily in solid usefulness and popular reputation. Though genuinely simple in his private character, he was punctilious about the details of official dignity and fostered, in the true antiquarian spirit, all the traditional orders and ceremonies of the place.3 He must always be accorded an honored place among Yale's presi dents, for the valuable aid he obtained from the State. SECTION V.-PRESIDENT TIMOTHY DWIGHT (1795-1817). There was no hesitation as to President Stiles's successor. In June, 1795, Timothy Dwight was chosen to the vacant place; he accepted in August, and was inducted into office September 8, the day before commencement. He was born at Northampton, Mass., in May, 1752, and graduated at Yale in 1769. He was a grandson of Jonathan Edwards. Before he was twenty he had written much of the "Conquest of Canaan,” a now forgotten epic in eleven books. In 1771 he was made tutor, which place he held for six years.5 In 1772, at the taking of his master's degree, he published a dissertation on the "History, Eloquence, and Poetry of the Bible." While a tutor, he advanced the interest in the study of English, and gave lectures on style and composition. He studied theology and, at the resignation of President Daggett, he was so popular among the students, that they signed a petition to the Corporation, begging to have him, though not yet 26 years old, made Presi dent, and this was stopped from going before the Corporation only by his own interference." In 1777 he became a Chaplain in the Revolutionary army. In 1783, he was chosen Pastor at Greenfield Hill, Conn., where he remained till he became President of Yale College. While there, he founded an academy, which he made not only preparatory to, but also parallel with the College course. In the twelve years he remained there, he instructed over 1,000 pupils and, by receiving young ladies as students, made his 'In 1780, a Saturday night prayer meeting was established at which, it is said, President Dwight was often present. 2 College book, 78. Dexter, Yale University, 46. 'J. L. Kingsley, 30. College Book, 79; J. L. Kingsley, 30. "Yale Book, 1, 112. school one of the very first in the country, where women were taught the higher branches. He early became noted for great aptness to learn, for his power of application and of retaining facts, his intense love of knowledge and reasoning powers of the highest order. His election fitly came at the close of the eighteenth century and near the opening of the nineteenth, with whose progress and vigor he was so much in sympathy. It was a favorable moment for the college. President Stiles had made it harmonious with the State, and the country at large was rapidly recovering from the prostration consequent upon the Revolution and the subsequent unsettled times. Still there was much room for work in the college itself; the number of students had fallen off to little over 100; the buildings, except the new dormitory, required repairs; the course of instruction needed broadening; the income, even with the late additions, did not equal the expenses, and tuition was largely depended upon; irreligion was rampant; and the faculty consisted only of a President, Professor, and three Tutors. President Dwight determined to follow President Stiles's plan of haying permanent professors, and conceived the idea of making Yale a true national university. His own great reputation "gave an importance and character to the institution, which it had never enjoyed before."" He tried to expand the college, so that it might provide suitable training for the leaders of the young Nation, and succeeded well. He awakened the interest of his pupils, kept harmony in the faculty, and with the aid of his Professors made Yale a national institution, with students from nearly every State. He paid much attention to the government of the College, and was extremely successful, relying much on his personal influence. It is stated that "no one ever understood young men better." Under him the system of pecuniary fines was abolished and the "Freshman Laws" done away with in 1804. Under him arose the esprit de corps, that "Yale spirit," which has so bound together the grad uates to their Alma Mater and to each other and, in the athletic field, has so often snatched a victory from the very jaws of defeat. He was hopeful in disposition, an ardent lover of his country and especially of New England, and an abhorrer of slavery. His conversational ability was remarkable, his manner always that of a gentleman, "his bearing and person of a noble mien, his form erect and full of dignity, his face beaming with intelligence and virtue, and his whole appearance impressive and imposing." He was "never at a loss what to say and seemed to say everything in the best manner. " 5 "As a man, as a citizen, as a scholar, as a theologian, as a benefactor of his own and succeeding 4 1 Am. Journal of Ed., v, 567. (Denison Olmsted.) College Book, 79. 3 Yale Book, 1, 118. 4J. L. Kingsley, 30. |