earliest and the most prominent of the demagogues of America. I have
not read the oration for fifty years; but, as I remember it, it
was, in the fashion of the day, one of the most eloquent of all our
readings.

As I was a favorite of the doctor in the last year of my course and
for years after, and as no one has ever in my estimation done him
justice, it is to me a debt of gratitude, as well as a matter of
justice, to repair as best I may this neglect. No one but a pupil
could ever have fairly estimated his force of character, and no pupil
whose intercourse with him was not carried into the post-graduate
years could measure the ability with which he advised, especially in
political matters, with his old pupils. In the days of his activity,
no institution in the country furnished so large an element to the
practical statesmanship of the United States as did Union. Seward
was one of his favorite pupils, and it is well known that, up to the
period of the American Civil War, he never took a step in politics
without the advice of the doctor. Having had a struggle with poverty
in his own early life, Dr. Nott sympathized heartily with the poorer
students, and a practical education was more easily gained at Union
than was then possible at Yale or Harvard. Men were allowed to defer
payment of the fees till later life when their means had increased;
and, though there were no scholarships, there were many students whose
burdens were so far alleviated by the regulations that an earnest man
who was determined to take his degree and work his way if he must,
needed never leave college unsatisfied.

The doctor's reading of character and detective powers were barely
short of the miraculous, and his management of refractory students
became so well known that many who had been expelled from the other