When our class first assembled in 1851 there was a slight boy
of seventeen in the company, Francis Channing Barlow. He was
inconspicuous through face or figure, but it early became clear that
he was to be our first scholar, and a wayward deportment with an
odd sardonic wit soon made him an object of interest. Barlow came
admirably fitted, and this good preparation, standing back of great
quickness and power of mind, made it easy for him almost without study
to take a leading place. As a boy he was well grounded, outside of his
special accomplishments, in Latin, Greek, and mathematics. I remember
his telling me that his mother read Plutarch to him when he was a
child, and that and many another good book he had thoroughly stored
away. Such accomplishments were an exasperation to us poor fellows who
had come in from the remote outskirts and found we must compete for
honours with men so well equipped. We perhaps magnified the gifts
and acquirements of the fellows who had been more favourably placed.
Barlow seemed like a paragon of scholarship, and the nonchalance with
which he always won in the classrooms was a constant marvel. He had a
queer way of turning serious things into fun. With a freshman
desire for self-improvement, a thing apt to evaporate in the college
atmosphere, we had formed a society for grave writing and debate and
hired for our meetings the lodge-room of the "Glorious Apollers" or
some such organisation. At an early meeting of the society, while
we were solemnly struggling through a dignified programme, Barlow
suddenly appeared from a side-door rigged out most fantastically in
plumes and draperies. He had somehow got hold of the regalia of the
order and drawlingly announced himself as the great panjandrum who had
come to take part. He danced and paraded before the conclave and had
no difficulty in turning the session into a wild revel of extravagant
guffaws and antics, and after that time the occasions were many when
Barlow gave a comic turn to things serious. It was said that Barlow,