Book Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter IV. IN COLLEGE. In August, 1811, Mr. Wright entered Middlebury College in the Freshman Class, and remained a member of that institution until he graduated in August, 1815. In college, he was never known to miss a lesson or transgress the rules in force. The Rev. Hiram S. Johnson, in a funeral discourse on his death, thus speaks of him: My acquaintance with this friend commenced in 1811. In early life we were treading together the halls of science. I knew him there as an industrious and diligent student, and as one of the most upright and sober young men. I say this from positive knowledge, and I say it firmly, because I have heard misapprehension intimate that Governor Wright was then indulging in some excesses. He was there distinguished for moral honesty and for an unbending regard to the truth. His inflexible attachment to truth and firmness was there, as it has been through all his life, proverbial. I have heard those who could not be mistaken say that, even in the days of his earliest childhood, his regard to truth and fair dealing was known, marked and controlling. These principles, thus deeply infixed, did much in laying the foundation for his unexampled elevation in after life. Mr. Wright graduated with honor and respect. He had no special taste for the dead languages, and it required much labor to keep up witli his class in them. Having no occasion to use it, the Greek soon passed from his memory. The Latin, often occurring in the practice of his profession, was substantially retained through life, though not read with much pleasure. In those studies where mere memory was mainly involved, he cannot be said to have been very siiccessful. But in those wherethe reasoning and reflecting faculties are largely brought into play, he had few, if any, superior...