June, 1861.—At the anniversary exercises, Rev. Samuel M. Hopkins of Auburn gave the address. I have graduated from Ontario Female Seminary after a five years course and had the honor of receiving a diploma from the courtly hands of General John A. Granger. I am going to have it framed and handed down to my grandchildren as a memento, not exactly of sleepless nights and midnight vigils, but of rising betimes, at what Anna calls the crack of dawn. She likes that expression better than daybreak. I heard her reciting in the back chamber one morning about 4 o’clock and listened at the door. She was saying in the most nonchalant manner: “Science and literature in England were fast losing all traces of originality, invention was discouraged, research unvalued and the examination of nature proscribed. It seemed to be generally supposed that the treasure accumulated in the preceding ages was quite sufficient for all national purposes and that the only duty which authors had to perform was to reproduce what had thus been accumulated, adorned with all the graces of polished style. Tameness and monotony naturally result from a slavish adherence to all arbitrary rules and every branch of literature felt this blighting influence. History, perhaps, was in some degree an exception, for Hume, Robertson and more especially Gibbon, exhibited a spirit of original investigation which found no parallel among their contemporaries.” I looked in and asked her where her book was, and she said she left it down stairs. She has “got it” all right, I am sure. We helped decorate the seminary chapel for two days. Our motto was, “Still achieving, still pursuing.” Miss Guernsey made most of the letters and Mr Chubbuck put them up and he hung all the paintings. It was a very warm week. General Granger had to use his palm leaf fan all the time, as well as the rest of us. There were six in our class, Mary Field, Lucy Petherick, Kate Lilly, Sarah Clay, Abby Scott and myself. Abbie Clark would have been in the class, but she went to Pittsfield, Mass., instead. General Granger said to each one of us, “It gives me great pleasure to present you with this diploma,” and when he gave Miss Scott hers, as she is from Alabama, he said he wished it might be as a flag of truce between the North and the South, and this sentiment was loudly cheered. General Granger looked so handsome with his black dress suit and ruffled shirt front and all the natural grace which belongs to him. The sheepskin has a picture of the Seminary on it and this inscription : “The Trustees and Faculty of the Ontario Female Seminary hereby certify that has completed the course of study prescribed in this Institution, maintained the requisite scholarship and commendable deportment and is therefore admitted to the graduating honors of this Institution. President of Board, John A. Granger; Benjamin F. Richards, Edward G. Tyler, Principals.” Mr Morse wrote something for the paper :
“To the Editor of the Repository:
“Dear S1r—June roses, etc., make our loveliest of villages a paradise this week. The constellations are all glorious and the stars of earth far outshine those of the heavens. The lake shore, ‘Lovers’ Lane’ ‘Glen Kitty’ and the ‘Points’ are full of romance and romancers. The yellow moon and the blue waters and the dark green shores and the petrified Indians, whispering stony words at the foot of Genundewah, and Squaw Island sitting on the waves, like an enchanted grove, and ‘Whalesback’ all humped up in the East and ‘Devil’s Lookout’ rising over all, made the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ a silver sea of witchery and love; and in the cottages and palaces we ate the ambrosia and drank the nectar of the sweet goddesses of this new and golden age.
“I may as well say to you, Mr Editor, that the Ontario Female Seminary closed yesterday and ‘Yours truly’ was present at commencement. Being a bachelor I shall plead guilty and appeal to the mercy of the Court, if indicted for undue prejudice in favor of the charming young orators. After the report of the Examining Committee, in which the scholarship of the young ladies was not too highly praised, came the Latin Salutatory by Miss Clay, a most beautiful and elegant production (that sentence, sir, applies to both salutatory and salutatorian). The ‘Shadows We Cast,’ by Miss Field, carried us far into the beautiful fields of nature and art and we saw the dark, or the brilliant shades, which our lives will cast, upon society and history. Then ‘Tongues in Trees’ began to whisper most bewitchingly, and ‘Books in the Running Brooks’ were opened, and ‘Sermons in Stones’ were preached by Miss Richards, and this old bachelor thought if all trees would talk so well, and every brook would babble so musically, and each precious stone would exhort so brilliantly, as they were made to do by the ‘enchantress,’ angels and dreams would henceforth be of little consequence; and whether the orator should be called ‘Tree of Beauty,’ ‘Minnehaha’ or the ‘Kohinoor’ is a ‘vexata questio.’
“In the evening Mr Hardick, ‘our own,’ whose hand never touches the piano without making delicious music, and Misses Daggett and Wilson, also ‘our own,’ and the musical pupils of the Institution, gave a concert. ‘The Young Volunteer’ was imperatively demanded, and this for the third time during the anniversary exercises, and was sung amid thunders of applause, ‘Star of the South,’ Miss Stella Scott, shining meanwhile in all her radiant beauty. May her glorious light soon rest on a Union that shall never more be broken.—Soberly yours,
A Very Old Bachelor.”
