صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

BY

OAKMAN S. STEARNS, D. D.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

"THE memory of the just is blessed." Memory, however, at its best, gives us only fragments of a whole. Life is a growth: "First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." We watch the result, we see little of the process. Whatever we see of the process are the transitions from one stage of growth to another. The whole life of one who has finished his earthly life never comes at our bidding. We see flashes of it, single incidents, scenes, thoughts, words, acts, but they are merely flashes. We make a note of them and they are gone.

The writer knows his own limitations. His is not the deft hand of his friend, so matchless to portray character and life in their due proportions and real beauty, but he feels assured that there are friendly eyes which will overlook his deficiencies, and that "there are friendly hearts which love even the footprints of the vanished excellence." The simple, plain story of Dr. Caldwell's life may shed some light upon such of his writings as are printed in this volume.

SAMUEL LUNT CALDWELL was born November 13, 1820, in the historic town of Newburyport, Mass. He was the first-born of nine children of Stephen and Mary (Lunt) Caldwell, the father a descendant of the Ipswich family of Caldwells, traditionally of Scotch origin; the mother a descendant of Henry Lunt, who settled in Newbury as early as 1635. On both sides his ancestry was distinguished by eminent men among the colonists, as yeomen, physicians, lawyers, and clergyınen. They were Puritan in stock and Puritan in spirit. His father was a man of

sterling integrity, and late in life, avowing himself a Christian, became a prominent member of the Baptist Church. His mother from early life had consecrated herself to the service of Christ, and was intensely interested in religious work among the Indians. Hoping that her first-born son might be a chosen vessel for such service, like Hannah she consecrated young Samuel "unto the Lord all the days of his life." The boy knew nothing of this, but the tendencies of his youth were all in the line of study and thought. He loved a book more than the sports of the playground. He had no genius for trade or the mechanic arts. He was accordingly sent to the grammar school to be fitted for college. Two of his teachers were the wellknown poets, George Lunt, a kinsman, and Albert Pike. Whether or not these poets stimulated his poetic temperament (for his life was a hymn, singing its melody through more than sixty years), is not known, but from the boy's letters after he entered college it is evident that they, or others of his teachers, caused him much sorrow and labor because of the meagreness of his preparation. He was admitted, however, into Waterville College (now Colby University) in 1835, and graduated with the class of 1839. The college was straitened financially, and inadequately equipped, but its teachers were men of large scholarship, enthusiastic, thorough disciplinarians, doing all in their power to train the mind to train itself, and inspiring to larger acquisitions by the truest methods. Young Caldwell was not yet fifteen years old. He was the youngest of a large class, and soon became the pet of the class. He had then, as ever afterwards, his choice friends with whom he took sweet counsel, but though select he was never exclusive. His classmates were nearly all mature men, with convictions already formed, and he was their David. He kept pace with them, and the early lover of books, with his omnivorous reading of a larger range of books, before he had reached his junior year,

« السابقةمتابعة »