This is a very informal presentment of a man whom I knew and loved. In his learning, his ability, his integrity, and in his opinions and methods I have large confidence. I have spoken of him as I knew him. I am glad to conclude these simple words with one remark. If I were entering Harvard College now, there is no man in the Class of 1859 whom I would sooner have for a chum than William Everett.

Mr. QUINCY followed, saying:

It is probable that I have known Dr. Everett longer than any one who is present. For I made his acquaintance in the year 1846, and saw more or less of him during the sequent years of my college course. He was then presented to me as well as to my fellow students, not as Dr. Everett, nor even as the Willie Everett known to his family, but as the "Infant Phenomenon." The name of course was borrowed from Dickens and was not misapplied to the little fellow who could talk fluently of the deep things in history, diplomacy and even theology. As his brother was a classmate of mine with whom I was on intimate terms, I had frequent opportunities of hearing this younger member of the family discourse upon the current events of the day in a manner that was interesting, as well as amazing from its maturity and confidence.

I knew him afterward when he came to live in Quincy and took charge of the Adams Academy, of which I was one of the trustees. He was a most entertaining visitor at my housealways retaining the same positiveness in his judgments which characterized them in the earlier days. Tennyson tells us that his friend Arthur Hallam objected to the rough world of business and enterprise by which we are environed, "for, ground in yonder social mill, we rub each other's angles down." Now this same social mill never ground hard enough to rub away the decorative angles of our friend. And so to offset Hallam's complaint-here was a case in which the friction did not "merge in form and gloss the picturesque of man and man." And I am disposed to think that this picturesqueness was a notable by-product of the scholar, orator and poet. It broke the monotony of our daily ex

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1 The use of this title as applied to young Everett was confirmed by Dr. Green, immediately after the reading of this tribute.

perience. If one said, "How do you do, Dr. Everett?" the response was likely to be something more than the conventional "Pretty well, I thank you." His was an intense mind that pushed away the trite commonplaces which so easily present themselves. And like other intelligences of this fine quality he paid the penalty in a certain narrowness of interest and outlook. He was, I think, always conservative. He was in no haste to cast aside the old garments of custom and belief which had done good service to those who preceded us. And this had its value in a time when so many conflicting ideals were presented for adoption, and varying speculations floated in the atmosphere.

While we accept the homely saying that it takes all sorts of men to make up a world, we necessarily consider the differing values of these components. And when we can recognize among them the presence of a salient personality,-like that of William Everett, we feel that here is an important counter-force to the hasty tendencies of the day which are always seeking to have their way with us.

Mr. SCHOULER, a Corresponding Member, paid the following tribute:

Dr. William Everett was by instinct, training and tradition a public character; and of the thousands in our Boston neighborhood who in the course of the last fifty years or more have met and spoken with him, and noted his unique and striking

even eccentric personality, few, very few of his own generation have known him intimately - none, indeed, unless they held from himself the rare talisman of his inner confidence.

Long years ago, during my brief connection as a school-boy with the Boston Latin School, of which that strongly individual character, Francis Gardner, had just been made head master, and on a public Saturday when we all gathered in the upper hall, the highest class capped verses from Virgil. In this contest a young stripling of about my own age, with red hair, bore off the honors over fellow-students most of whom must have been at least four years older. This, I was told, was a son of the famous Edward Everett. When, therefore, after some changes of school life and parental domicile I entered Harvard in the Class of 1859, this same youth as a fellow-freshman appeared to me no stranger; though evidently his precocity

in the classics had not brought him into college life earlier than his age would warrant. In those undergraduate years the classes, so small in number as compared with what they are now, met familiarly in recitations and socially, so that during the four years' course we came to know one another through and through, and could judge quite fairly of the traits and probable careers in life of our fellows. Everett, of our number, was marked for high distinction, with his marvellous fondness for books and literature, his scholarship, and his eager emulation of the great orators of Greece and Rome; and, withal, as one whose coming zeal was to lead and direct the people," and read his history in a nation's eyes."

The flower of his life's achievement has closely corresponded with the germ. Great faults, great virtues, were mingled in his inner nature. Had he thus early or in later life found the tender and softening influence of some devoted woman's companionship, to smooth his pathway and polish off his angularities, he might have reached and grasped more firmly, more readily, the ideals of public influence he so bravely sought and so constantly strove for, not always heedful of the enmities his manners and methods might provoke. He might thus have been kept to a closer continuity of effort. But under any circumstances this gnarled, knotted, complex personality was bound to be remarkable. He was genuine, outspoken, forcible, in every utterance.

William Everett was ardently, earnestly, ambitious of distinction, whatever sphere might be open to him. In the first newspaper which I read, announcing his recent death, I found it stated, and stated truly, that he had struggled above the fame of being the son of his father, by his own attainments. I recall that when at college he wrote an article on "Great Names Forgotten" for the "Harvard Magazine" - a students' periodical, long since extinct, of which I was an editor during my senior year; and in this essay he carefully collated historical examples, both ancient and modern, where the public renown gained by some great family leader had eclipsed or obscured the fame of later scions bearing the same name. "He is anxious about himself," was my comment upon that article; and later observation of his manhood confirms that impression. Edward Everett, indeed, the father, was one of our most influential Americans in his own generation and en

joyed while he lived the highest rewards of fame, as orator, academic scholar and statesman, that his native State or the nation itself could confer, short of that supreme presidential station which comes to so few of us Americans and only as the gift of the whole people. Nor should it be forgotten that while conservative for a space, in honest efforts to keep North and South bound fraternally by the old compact of freedom and slavery, he ceased those efforts the moment Fort Sumter fell and for the rest of his noble life upheld earnestly the cause which finally triumphed. No real biography of Edward Everett has yet issued from the press, so far as I am awarenot even in the "Statesmen" or other popular series of handy volumes; and for this, perhaps, the son was partially at fault, who gathered materials long ago, for a filial memoir, but never fulfilled the task himself nor delegated it to others.

Any such seeming neglect, however, on the son's part, I would not impute to a rival ambition, but rather to the diversity of his own ambitious efforts, which weakened their final effect. Had he concentrated his talents and energy upon some master task requiring long and patient work, or sought in his lofty flights some particular direction, he would have achieved. splendid results. When he returned to Massachusetts after a graduate course at the Cambridge University across the ocean, -and non-professional graduate work in those days our young men seldom pursued, it seemed as though each avenue to fame in this vicinity stood wide open to his choice. In the old Archway building on Washington Street, opposite the head of Franklin, where Lowell Institute lectures were then delivered, he began a course on the English university life which I attended, before a large and expectant audience, with several of Boston's solid men on the platform, and our Society's distinguished President, Robert C. Winthrop, to introduce him. Thus well was he started as a public lecturer.

It was not very long after this that he joined the faculty of his alma mater as a tutor and assistant professor, and it seemed as though his vocation in life were fairly opened at our own leading University. But he gained, beside, a license to preach; and when the society of Brattle Square Church moved to Commonwealth Avenue, and its minister, Dr. Lothrop, resigned with advancing years, Everett sought earnestly to be chosen the successor. He took steps also for membership in

the Boston Bar. And, more than this, he showed an incessant eagerness to enter political life, which developed throughout his prime, and became in a partial measure gratified.

Two notable changes in Massachusetts routine were made, if I mistake not, in furtherance of William Everett's political aspirations: (1) that article of our venerable constitution which forbade a "president, professor, or instructor of Harvard College" to sit in the legislature was repealed in 1877; (2) under a provision which permits members of Congress to be chosen in districts where the candidate does not reside, he captured once a seat as Representative, after the English Parliamentary fashion, when Independents and Democrats fused under Cleveland's lead against the Republican party.

That non-resident victory at the polls, in 1892, was doubtless the most auspicious of Dr. Everett's whole career, and to him the most inspiring. On the floor of the famous representative arena at our nation's capital he found himself well equipped for debate and at once made friends and fame by his gift of oratory. The jesting phrase of his speech there as to "depositing in a cavity" has become a national expression. I have often since wished for his sake that he might have gained a constituency both loyal and appreciative, so as to become by successive re-elections a national figure at Washington, like John Randolph or John Quincy Adams of our earlier annals; for his unique and vivacious personality would surely have become historic in renown among those impressive surroundings, while an honest and independent speech and an intelligent vote might have been expected from him on all critical occasions. But this was not to be; and a single congressional term rounded his service to the national public. In politics he was a "mugwump" and an opportunist in affairs; desirous always of good government as he understood it; but not strongly identified with special reforms; and unfitted at all times for submission to party discipline for the sake of a party success, beside being quite disqualified from organizing a personal following.

Hence our associate's fame must rest mainly upon his conspicuous scholarship and gifts of eloquence and written composition, as shown on occasion; and, moreover, upon his good record as a teacher of the young. His long and honorable career as head master of the Adams Academy stands pre-eminent in point of