deal. "Yes, I will do it," he told a clergyman who asked him to revise his sermon; "but you ought to know that I am a bloody man." The Library.       Though revivals have such predominance during the administration of President Griffin, overshadowing all the ordinary machineries of college work, not a few of the men who received their diplomas at his hands must be regarded as having somehow got a pretty fair education. Among them were Mark Hopkins, David Dudley Field, Dr. Prime of The New York Ohserver, Prof. Albert Hopkins, Prof. John Morgan of Oberlin, Parsons Cooke of The Boston Recorder, and Senator Dixon of Connecticut.       When Dr. Griffin resigned in 1836, —ill health compelling him to take that step, — there were one hundred and twenty-one students in the college. Fifteen years before, when he entered upon his work, there were only forty-nine. Besides a chapel had been built and a professorship of rhetoric endowed. He left Williamstown amidst quite other demonstrations than those which attended the exit of President Zephaniah Moore. "The people there," he writes in his journal, "expressed much regret at our departure. The students appointed a committee of two from each class to express their respect and attachment. . . . The faculty invited me to a social dinner at the Mansion House. As I was getting into the carriage on Thursday morning, the students came in a procession to take their last leaves. I made an address to them from the carriage, and some of them wept." Prof. John Bascom, 1863.       When the trustees came to ballot for a new president, "all the votes," according to their record, "were found to be for Professor Mark Hopkins." Graduating in 1824, he was tutor in the college for the two following years, then studied medicine and thought of establishing himself as a physician in New York, but finally in 1830 accepted the chair of Moral Philosophy and Rhetoric. There is no reason to suppose that he himself had any aspirations for the place, or considered himself as especially qualified for it. Once, when his opinion was asked in regard to the successor of Dr. Griffin, he replied, "Oh, John Morgan is the man." The students, however, and especially the senior class, of whose instruction he took the entire charge in consequence of the failing health of the president, had quite definite ideas of what ought to be done, and took occasion to communicate them to the trustees. What course they might -- page 169 -- Previous Page | Next Page | Town of Williamstown Page | Berkshire County Western MA History & Genealogy

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