the late eminent judge. It is scarcely more than a year ago, at the
semi-centennial celebration of the academy, that Franklin Pierce, the
mature and distinguished man, paid a beautiful tribute to the character
of Madam Woodbury, in affectionate remembrance of the motherly kindness
experienced at her hands by the school-boy.

The old people of his neighborhood give a very delightful picture of
Franklin at this early age. They describe him as a beautiful boy, with
blue eyes, light curling hair, and a sweet expression of face. The
traits presented of him indicate moral symmetry, kindliness, and a
delicate texture of sentiment, rather than marked prominences of
character. His instructors testify to his propriety of conduct, his
fellow-pupils to his sweetness of disposition and cordial sympathy. One
of the latter, being older than most of his companions, and less advanced
in his studies, found it difficult to keep up with his class; and he
remembers how perseveringly, while the other boys were at play, Franklin
spent the noon recess, for many weeks together, in aiding him in his
lessons. These attributes, proper to a generous and affectionate nature,
have remained with him through life. Lending their color to his
deportment, and softening his manners, they are, perhaps, even now, the
characteristics by which most of those who casually meet him would be
inclined to identify the man. But there are other qualities, not then
developed, but which have subsequently attained a firm and manly growth,
and are recognized as his leading traits among those who really know him.
Franklin Pierce's development, indeed, has always been the reverse of
premature; the boy did not show the germ of all that was in the man, nor,
perhaps, did the young man adequately foreshow the mature one.

In 1820, at the age of sixteen, he became a student of Bowdoin College,
at Brunswick, Maine. It was in the autumn of the next year that the