in that sense he was unsuited, like Everett, for the time in which he
lived. If he had been chosen president of the university after the
resignation of Doctor Hill, as George S. Hillard and other prominent
graduates desired, the great broadening and liberalizing of the
university, which has taken place since, would have been deferred for the
next fifteen years. He had little sympathy with the anti-slavery
movement, and was decidedly opposed to the religious liberalism of his
time; but Doctor Peabody's interest lay in the salvation of human souls,
and in this direction he had no equal. He felt a personal regard in every
human being with whom he was acquainted, and this seemed more important
to him than abstract schemes for the improvement of the race in general.
He was a man of peace and wished all others to be at peace; the confusion
and irritation that accompanies reform was most disagreeable to him. Many
a Harvard student who trembled on the brink of an abyss, far from home
and left to his own devices, afterwards looked back to Doctor Peabody's
helping hand as to the hand of a beneficent providence held out to save
him from destruction; and those whom he was unable to save thought of him
no less gratefully.

In the autumn of 1864 a strange sort of student joined the Sophomore
class. He soon proved that he was one of the best scholars in it; but to
judge from his recitations it was long since he had been to school or
received any regular instruction. He lived chiefly on bread and milk, and
seemed not to have learned how to take exercise. It is feared that he
suffered much from loneliness in that busy hive, where everyone has so
many small affairs of his own to attend to. Just before the annual
examinations he was seized with brain-fever and died. Doctor Peabody
conducted the funeral services at the boarding-house of the unfortunate
youth, and the plainness of the surroundings heightened the eloquence of
his address. His prayer on that occasion was so much above the average