Austin Phelps; A Memoir (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. AUTOBIOGRAPHIC. -- EARLY MANHOOD. "I Was fitted for college at the age of twelve years, and entered Hobart College at Geneva in the year following. I was well fitted according to the curriculum of that period, and was able to sustain a good rank in my class, usually being recognized as its head. " I am deeply indebted to the Hon. Horace Webster, then professor in Hobart College, for certain awakening and cheering influences upon me. He gave me lessons in advance of my class and heard me recite them in private. I was greatly aroused by once hearing that he had said to some one else that ' the world would yet hear from young Phelps.' I inwardly resolved that it should. " In view of the fact that so much of my later life has been devoted to literary criticism, one other fact in my college life at Geneva is worth recording. My tutor in the languages I observed watching me very narrowly for many days, when I was called up to recite. At length he directed me to remain after the class had retired. I did so; and he questioned me closely as to my methods of study, and specially inquired whether I sought aid from translations. I could truthfully answer that I did not. He accepted my word for it with evident pleasure, and told methat my translations were so critically accurate that he feared I was using illegitimate helps. I hardly knew what he meant: the virtue was an unconscious one; but I suppose that whatever success I have since then achieved in literary work is in part due to an innate taste which was then beginning to develop itself. " Geneva College was not at that time a safe place for a lad of my age. I entered at the age of thirteen, and found myself in the midst of a rather corrupt life. Many of the students were from the South; very few were Chr...