His name was Phinehas
Barnes, and, if he is inquired after in Portland or anywhere in the State
of Maine, something will be heard to his advantage from any honest and
intelligent citizen of that Commonwealth who answers the question. This
was one of two or three friendships that lasted. There were other friends
and classmates, one of them a natural humorist of the liveliest sort, who
would have been quarantined in any Puritan port, his laugh was so
potently contagious.
Of the noted men of Andover the one whom I remember best was Professor
Moses Stuart. His house was nearly opposite the one in which I resided
and I often met him and listened to him in the chapel of the Seminary. I
have seen few more striking figures in my life than his, as I remember
it. Tall, lean, with strong, bold features, a keen, scholarly,
accipitrine nose, thin, expressive lips, great solemnity and
impressiveness of voice and manner, he was my early model of a classic
orator. His air was Roman, his neck long and bare like Cicero's, and his
toga,--that is his broadcloth cloak,--was carried on his arm, whatever
might have been the weather, with such a statue-like rigid grace that he
might have been turned into marble as he stood, and looked noble by the
side of the antiques of the Vatican.
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