before been laid in his untimely grave, he stood in his place as
president of the college. Through the agency of my dear friends of
those years, Dr. Henry W. Bellows and Dr. Edward Everett Hale, I was
to go with him as, so to speak, his under-study, discharging the work
of English professor and sometimes the duties of preacher. I went
gladly. The spirit of the dead leader haunted pervasively the shades
where he had laboured and died. The tradition of Horace Mann
was paramount among the students, the graduates, and the whole
environment. I had felt as a boy the spell of his voice and presence
and knew no hero whom I could follow more cordially. It was a joy to
become domiciled in the house which had been built for him and where
he had breathed his last, and to labour day by day along the noble
lines which he had laid down. This was my post for six years, one of
which, however, was spent in Europe, in the hope of gaining an added
fitness for my place.

I have no mind to set down here a record of those Antioch years.
One experiment we tried in a field then very novel and looked upon
askance. To-day in our schools and universities the pageant and the
drama play a large part. Forty years ago they were unknown or in
hiding, and it may be claimed that our little fresh-water college
bore a part in initiating a development that has become memorable and
widely salutary. In 1872 I wrote out the story of our attempt for
Mr. Howells, in the _Atlantic Monthly_, a film which may
appropriately be staged among my pictures.

_The New Wrinkle at Sweetbrier; or, The Drama in Colleges_

I have been distressed, dear Fastidiosus, by your remonstrance
concerning the performance at our college at Sweetbrier of a "stage