recurring anniversary the controversy was gravely renewed, much to the
amusement of the family and always to his own perplexity. In November,
1856, my mother died, and, at the breaking up of the family in St.
Louis, my brother and myself, the last of six children, were taken to
Amherst, Massachusetts, by our cousin, Miss Mary F. French, who took
upon herself the care and responsibility of our bringing up. How nobly
and self-sacrificingly she entered upon and discharged those duties my
brother gladly testified in the beautiful dedication of his first
published poems, "A Little Book of Western Verse," wherein he honored
the "gracious love" in which he grew, and bade her look as kindly on the
faults of his pen as she had always looked on his own. For a few years
my brother attended a private school for boys in Amherst; then, at the
age of fourteen, he was intrusted to the care of Rev. James Tufts, of
Monson, one of those noble instructors of the blessed old school who are
passing away from the arena of education in America. By Mr. Tufts he was
fitted for college, and from the enthusiasm of this old scholar he
caught perhaps the inspiration for the love of the classics which he
carried through life. In the fall of 1868 he entered Williams
College--the choice was largely accidental--and remained there one year.
My father died in the summer of 1869, and my brother chose as his
guardian Professor John William Burgess, now of Columbia University, New
York City. When Professor Burgess, later in the summer, accepted a call
to Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, my brother accompanied him and
entered that institution, but the restlessness which was so
characteristic of him in youth asserted itself after another year and
he joined me, then in my junior year at the University of Missouri, at
Columbia. It was at this institution that he finished his education so
far as it related to prescribed study.

Shortly after attaining his majority he went to Europe, remaining six