UKL 5 131 t>78 SAMUEL OSBORNE JANITOR ifornij mal ity A -D. SAMUEL OSBORNE, JANITOR SAMUEL OSBORNE JANITOR BT FREDERICK MORGAN PA.DELPORD BOSTON PHILLIPS, PUBLISHER COPYRIGHT, 1913 BY FREDERICK M. PADELFORD Sljp Jari ft.ll frrw SAMUEL USHER BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS TO THE CLASS OF '96, COLBY COLLEGE, WHO. WITH SO MANY OTHERS. ENJOYED THE FRIENDSHIP OF SAM, THIS LITTLE SKETCH IS DEDICATED SRLF- URL 5131678 SAMUEL OSBORNE JANITOR A GROUP of men, young, middle- ** aged, and elderly, crowding around a little man on the platform of the Maine Central Station at Water- ville. Hearty handshakes; hearty claps on the broad shoulders which bear up manfully under the assault; hearty laughter from the besiegers, merry falsetto chuckles and ripples from the besieged such was my first glimpse of Samuel Osborne, Janitor. " Samuel Osborne, Janitor," when the dignity of the college was at stake, as when an itinerant organ grinder from sunny Italy, bribed by a shower of un- dergraduate pennies, with organ and monkey invaded the quiet precincts of [i] the campus during recitation hours, otherwise " Sam." It was the Commencement season of 1891 to which I have alluded, and the alumni were just getting back. I had gone up to Colby to spend the week with my brother and to get a little foretaste of college life before matriculating. When the crowd had somewhat dispersed, I was taken up and introduced to Sam as a prospec- tive student. " So you's goin' to be one of my boys ! Well, Mr. Dehfohd, you jes' behave yohself as well as youeh brudah dat's all I asks. I'se got a very fine lot of young genelmen heah, but I guess you'll pass; he! he! Sorry I can't talk longah, but I'se got a lot o' my old boys to look aftah dis aftahnoon," and he hurried away to the baggage room, his energetic little legs struggling vainly to keep up with his more energetic little head. Sam was as black as his own polished boots, as why should he not have been, for never a drop of alien mixture [2] had tainted the pure negro blood of his forefathers. His bright eyes, like the eyes of Chaucer's frere, twinkled in his head aright As doon the sterres in the frosty night, and his beard was worn forked, after the manner of Chaucer's own. He was dressed in a dark blue uniform, and on his coat was an impressive nickel badge, which shone as brightly as his own ebon skin, and which bore upon it the proud inscription, " Janitor of Colby College." From that first meeting Sam was my personal and peculiar friend, as per- sonally and peculiarly mine as if he were not the very special friend of every student who had attended the college for a generation. The passing years have given many goodly friends, friends of boyhood, friends of college days and young manhood, friends of riper years, but in the temple of friend- ship the memory of Samuel Osborne has it own particular shrine. To [3] think of Sam to-day, when fifteen years have done their best to obliterate, with their multifarious and distracting inter- ests, the memories and friendships of college days, is to quaff deeply and long the pure wine of hope and optimism, is to brace one's self afresh for the strug- gle, with the conviction that life is worth while and worth the best we have to give it. I think you would enjoy hearing the story of this friend. The history of Sam's early years is full of interest, for it illustrates the vicissitudes in the life of a slave lad, and is not without its own romantic episodes. Sam was born in Lanesville, King and Queen County, Virginia, October 20, 1833, on the plantation of a Dr. William Welford. While he was still very young, his master moved to Fredericksburg, taking his retinue of slaves with him. It was here that Sam spent his boyhood and youth. His favorite playmate from his babyhood was a little girl two years his junior, named Maria Iveson, who had been [4] swapped to the doctor for another slave child when only a babe in arms. As children, they played together around the cabins and among the flowers, and, being children of more than usual parts, were made much of by both master and mistress. Later, the comradeship of childhood ripened naturally into the love of youth. Sam found two other warm friends in Dr. Welford's sons, and with them enjoyed some of the sports of boyhood. When the boys were old enough to be sent to school, Sam was moved with the desire to learn to read and write, and in pursuance of this end bought an old spelling book, which was purchased with money saved from selling rags. Many a long even- ing, after the other slaves had gone to bed, Sam pored over the mysteries of this book, stretched out before the cabin fire. But it was slow work, and before he had made much progress his efforts to gain the rudiments of an edu- cation had to give way to work. Sam was now trained to be a cook, [5] and that he gave himself to his work with intelligence and conscientiousness is testified to by the medal which he kept through life, and which he used proudly to display to us college boys. Several times he was hired out by his master to some boarding school, where he was brought into intimate touch with the students, and he thus early came to understand boys at school, and the lessons that he then learned stood him in good stead in his later work, for if there was anything, actual or potential, about boys that Sam did not know, we never were able to dis- cover it. It was during his life at Fredericks- burg that Sam felt most strongly the influence of the noble Christian char- acter of his young mistress. She or- ganized a Sunday school among the slave children, and under her tutelage Sam, while still in his teens, began the consistent Christian life which later years only served to deepen and expand. Mrs. Welford was Sam's ideal, and I 16] never knew him to speak of her without reverently removing his hat. It was a little thing, perhaps, but it told a deal about Mrs. Welford and a deal about Sam. It was specified in her will that none of the Osborne family, consisting of three brothers and a sister, should ever be sold, and that Sam should have money enough to secure a good educa- tion. Of course the war frustrated the kindly intent of this will. At the age of twenty, Sam moved with his master to Culpepper County. Here he married Maria, his childhood playmate. The war brought many changes into Sam's life. His mother went farther south to serve Mrs. Welford's married daughter, and the first separation of the family took place. Sam did not hear of her again until the year 1867, when he found her in Washington, shortly before her death. His master now moved to Danville, close to the North Carolina border. Here Sam was made overseer of the new plantation, and his [7] master's papers were put in his charge. But Dr. Welford was reduced to such straits by the work and presence of the Union army that he found it impossible to maintain his slaves, and Sam was thus thrown upon his own resources. Soon, however, he obtained employ- ment in the office of Colonel Stephen Fletcher, United States Provost Mar- shal at Danville. Through the vaga- ries of war, Sam and Maria now found themselves, the one the servant of a Union master and the other the servant of a Southern mistress, in the same household. Colonel Fletcher had his office in the house of a Confederate colonel named Withers, who was him- self in the northern part of North Carolina, driven there by the Union army. But Mrs. Withers was allowed the privilege of remaining in her own home, and Maria was employed to care for her child. After the war, in May, 1865, Colonel Fletcher, who had conceived a great liking for his servant, brought Sam and [8] two of the daughters to his own home in Waterville. Sam at once found em- ployment with the Maine Central Rail- road. In the following October, Maria, with the third child, joined her hus- band. The circumstances leading to her arrival furnish a picturesque illus- tration of the peculiar sentiment of the time. It seems that the Maine State Sunday School Convention was to be held in Waterville, and, to add to the interest of the occasion, Sam, who was something of a novelty, inasmuch as very few negroes had found their way into the state, was asked to sing a solo. To get the maximum of effect, Sam was wrapped in an American flag and placed upon the platform. The en- thusiasm and emotion of the audience was so aroused by this episode that, after the solo, a contribution was taken to defray the expense of bringing Mrs. Osborne to Waterville. As the valid- ity of the marriage was questioned, Sam and Maria were " re-united," as Sam was wont to put it, in the presence of [9] Professor and Mrs. Hamlin and other prominent citizens. Sam's thrift and filial loyalty are shown by the fact that within a year after his coming north he had saved enough money to bring his father to Waterville. For a year his father served as janitor of the col- lege, but upon his death in 1867 Sam was appointed to fill the vacancy. Placed in this new environment, Sam transferred to the college that loyalty which the negroes of ante- bellum days had felt for the master and the plantation. It was an affection and a devotion as instinctive as it was deep. From the first, Sam's strong qualities won him the confidence of both faculty and students, but as time went on, with its inevitable changes in the faculty of the college and in its fortunes, he came more and more to be regarded not only as a bright, reliable, hard-working servant, but as a man whose life was peculiarly inwrought with the destinies of the college. It was this Sam of later years that I [10] knew, a man to whose unique and many-sided personality it is very diffi- cult for a writer to do justice. I can only hope to touch upon certain of its more picturesque aspects. Despite Sam's early ambition to become educated, he could neither read nor write. No that statement is unjust and inaccurate. Sam could both read and write, and I herewith submit the evidence. Among his many duties was that of postman, and the outgoing mail, which he collected each morning from the students as they hur- ried to chapel, or gathered from the boxes in the afternoon, was mailed on the trains at the station opposite the campus. Sam had learned by pure observation the appearance of the names of most of the leading cities or towns, and could thus sort the mail which was going to Portland, Augusta, or beyond the borders of the state, from that which was going to Bangor and points to the east. The question- able addresses were submitted to some student whom Sam knew especially well, or, if no such student were at hand, to the mail clerks themselves. One morning I was enjoying the luxury of a " cut " from chapel and was seated on the dormitory steps, musing on the vanity of human institutions, when Sam came by with his bag of mail. " Ah, Mr. Dehfohd, very sorry to see you'se not attendin' chapel dis mornin', you needs it, Mr. Dehfohd, but so long as you isn't in chapel, I wondah if you would jes' kinely cast youeh eye ovah a few of dese addresses. I declah foh it, it do seem to me dat my young men writes wussah and wus- sah every yeah. Dey writes so much Latin and Greek, dat I reckon deyjes' nachully forgets how to write deah native tongue. I guess we'll have to put penmanship into de cooriculum of dis college. Why, I'se quite ashamed of my young men, I is." And he hur- ried away to the depot, with the troublesome letters in the right pockets of his bag, chuckling merrily to himself. [12] Though it was of course generally known that Sam's knowledge of read- ing and writing was thus limited, he pretended to be able to read the news- papers and would often drop into the reading room in the basement of Old South of an evening and glance over the pages of the Boston Journal, which paper he chose through pro- nounced political convictions, ap- parently absorbed in its contents. The next morning he would animatedly discuss the issues of the day with a group of students gathered on the steps, having in the meantime heard the news read by his children at home. Such was the affection felt for Sam, that no one of us would have wounded his feelings by twitting him with this little foible, and, moreover, we were forced to respect ,his appreciative knowledge of the events of the day. Sam could also write, for his children had taught him to write his name, at least to write what passed for his name, and this scrawl was proudly signed to [13] college bills or written across the face of his photograph. But the most remarkable of Sam's intellectual achievements was his trans- lation of the more difficult passages in the "Funeral Oration of Pericles." This was assigned us by Professor Foster in the spring of our freshman year, not through any delusion on his part that we and by " we " I mean the class at large, not the uncomfort- able genius who is to be found in every class to disturb the peace of mind and the contentment of the great majority not through any delusion, I say, that we could handle it, but merely to let us see that the time was hardly ripe for us to drop the subject, though most of us took it as evidence that the time for the severance of this man- imposed companionship was fully ripe. Long before my freshman days, Sam, hearing the general complaint of this purgatorial plunge, had learned by heart, from some waggish tutor, of blessed memory, a literal translation [Ml of several pages of the more difficult Greek. When May and Thucydides grappled for our souls as angels and demons may be seen in some quaint canvas by a Fra Angelico tugging lustily by head and heel at some quivering, pendant sinner Sam would begin to throw out hints of help that might be proffered: "I doan usually believe in helpin' you young genelmen, but I allus feels dat I ought to give my freshmen jes' a little lif when it comes to dat ' Fuhnyal Oration of Pehicles.' " And then the passage would be read, with appropriate gesture and true Demos- thenic fervor, to a crowd of eager boys, armed with pencil and tablet. Sam had an unusually good memory, all the better probably because he was forced to rely upon it so largely. I have heard an ex-President observe that it was his custom to call Sam into his office and give him a list of errands to do, and that Sam would invariably attend to them in the order enumerated, without forgetting a detail. Sam's [15] memory was equally impeccable when put to the test of time. He never forgot the name of an alumnus, and he remembered even the trivial details of a man's college career. I once asked him about the record of a man who had attended college for a short time some fifteen years before my own day. With- out a moment's hesitation Sam told me where the man roomed, who were his friends, and then, on the pledge of secrecy, the prank that had caused his dismissal. Coupled with his memory was a very keen and minute power of observation, which nothing seemed to escape. One wintry evening as Sam was lighting the lamps which hung in the corridor op- posite my door, he heard some one descending the darkened staircase above. With a merry chuckle he shouted, " I hasn't heard dat step roun' here for a long time. Seems like ole days; nobody else roun' here ever come down stairs jes' like dat," and from the darkness emerged a fellow who had not [16] been back to the college since his gradu- ation nine years before. Sam's quickness of wit and ready power of repartee were an unending source of amusement to both students and faculty. It was worth defeat to see Sam momentarily studying over some challenge of wit and then to see him double up and hug his stomach with glee, only to undouble as abruptly and throw his head far back and to one side, with roguish eyes a-rolling, as he discharged the retort. It was Sam's annual custom to burn over the campus, in order to give the fresh grass a start. One morning as Sam was thus engaged, a very fresh freshman sauntered along the walk, pipe in mouth, stood and watched Sam a moment, and then re- marked, " Well, Sam, that's almost as black and fuzzy as your hair." With scarcely a moment's hesitation came the rejoinder, " Dat's true, Johnnie; 'spect it'll come up fresh in a few days, but it won't be half so green as you is." The joke was overheard by a [17] sophomore and it was the making of Johnnie. One evening after a somewhat heated religious discussion, in which some arrant rascals had been putting Sam's faith to the test, one of them asked, " But, Sam, what are you going to do up in Heaven? " " Go on takin* care of de Colby boys." " But suppose you don't get there?" " Oh, go right on takin' care of 'em jes' de same." Ex-President Pepper enjoyed telling the reply which Sam made to one of his sallies. Several years after Dr. Pepper had retired, he was back at Commence- ment, and, observing Sam bustling about, remarked, " Sam, you seem to be rushing around a good deal; I don't believe you're half so busy as you pretend to be." Sam was too busy to argue the point, but as he hurried on he shot back the retort: " Dat's all very true, Doctah Peppah, but I learned dat lesson from you, when you was President." Like most of his race, Sam magnified [18] his office, and this exalted conception of his official self was to him an unfail- ing source of satisfaction and inspira- tion. It cast the golden glow of poetry over the drudgery of daily life; it ir- radiated the commonplace with its own bright, enduring colors. It hov- ered between the sublime and the ridiculous, but though it sometimes actually entered into the realm of the sublime, it seldom was allowed to ap- pear really absurd. The fact was that Sam was extremely sensitive to other people's impressions, and he was not often betrayed into exposing the dear idol of his imagination to their ridicule. He knew deep in his heart that it would not stand the severe light of cold reason, and he revered it too much to expose it to a test too searching. But when the good name of the college was brought in question, when some act of meanness aroused his indignation, or when some momentous event in the life of the college invited men to dis- close the deeper feelings of the heart, then Sam was transformed into his ideal self, and, clad in the shining gar- ment of his own majestic vision, thun- dered forth the crescendo volume of his eloquence. No one who had the good fortune to attend prayer meeting that particular Sunday evening will be likely to forget Sam's farewell remarks on the occasion of the leave-taking of one of his favorite presidents. It was a kind of glorification of the college and of its successive presidents, and a lamenta- tion for the transitoriness of all things temporal. Chapter after chapter the history of thirty years of the college was reviewed, each chapter culminat- ing in eloquent regret for the departure of a president. With head thrown far back and eyes half closed, Sam sur- rendered himself to the mood, and, breaking through the cooling restraint of three decades of New England prayer meetings in a college church, chanted his impassioned, cadential lay as his ancestors had chanted before [20] him. In this changing panorama of college life, Sam figured as the one fixed quantity, and the cumulative re- frain resolved itself into the reflection that " President Champlin, he come and go, but Sam stay on; an' den President Robbins, he come and go, but Sam stay on; an' den President Pep- pah, he come and go, but Sam stay on; an' den President Small, he come and go, but Sam stay on; an' den President Whitman, he come and go, but Sam stay on; an' now President Butlah, he's gwine to go, but ole Sam'll still stay on! " Sam stood out in superb relief as the living center, the one stable factor, in the ever-changing vicissitudes of the college. He was the one rock of defense against which the waves of the passing years beat themselves in vain. It was perhaps amusing, but it was curiously pathetic, and, in its way, beautiful. It was the revelation of the controlling ideal of a good life, a glimpse into a sanctuary, and he would indeed have been unfeeling who [21] could have looked into that sanctuary with contempt. There was no time, however, when Sam opened his heart more feelingly to his friends than on the occasion of his annual farewell address to the graduating class. Like all good col- lege customs, this sprang up as it were by accident. It was a time-honored custom at Colby, as at other New Eng- land colleges, to have the last chapel exercises of the seniors conducted by the class chaplain, with appropriate ceremony. Now it chanced that the class of 1896 was one to which Sam felt particularly close, and on the oc- casion of its last chapel exercise the old janitor was so much affected that, as soon as the exercises were concluded, he ran up to the class president, and begged to be allowed to meet the class alone for a few moments. Word was hastily passed around that Sam had something to say to us, and we reas- sembled in the chapel. Sam stepped to the platform and began: "I hope [22] you young genelmen and ladies won't tink dat youeh ole janitah doan know his place, but I jes' cain't beah to have you go 'til I has tole you how good you all's been to youeh ole Sam and how much youeh ole Sam loves you. I sat and watched de sun go down las' night, and I says to myself, ' Sam, dat's jes' de way you'se losin' yoh boys and girls,' an' do' when I got up dis mawnin' dere was anodeh nice, new, bright day, it wan de same day, and when you gets as ole as I is, you'll fine it a little hahdeh every time to say good-by, and you'll fine dat de new friens doan jes' make up for de ole ones." And then Sam launched into retrospect, recalled many instances of our four years' history, some that made us smile and some that made us look down to lose Sam's eye for a moment, and then told us how he expected us to be loyal alumni, and always to stand by the college, and finally exhorted us to be good men and women, remembering that character was what the college [23] had tried to give us, and was the one thing worth while after all. It was the best talk that we had heard during our college days, and when it was over we gathered around Sam, as children might gather around a revered parent, and said what our feelings would allow us to say. So much was this " farewell address " discussed about the college that the class of the following year took the initiative and invited Sam to address them, and thus the custom became established. Among Sam's other attributes was the gift of divination. He was the primitive man, a part of nature's self, and he looked upon the truth un- blinded, undimmed by the veil of knowledge formalized. In this respect he was absolutely uncanny, a person to be discussed and analyzed in remote rooms or upon quiet walks. Sam never talked about these supernatural pow- ers, and so far as I know the Society for Psychical Research never had him [24] under inspection, but he had these powers, abnormally, unhumanly de- veloped not only had them, but used them, nightly. It was not fair, it gave the college authorities an im- possible handicap, but facts are facts, and must be faced bravely, resignedly. Hope springs eternal in the human breast especially when that breast is in college, and nights are dark and the pulse beats high but at Colby it sprang in vain. Sam had but to cast one searching, secret-revealing glance at the luminaries of the college heaven, and there was nothing that would fain be hid that was not revealed, revealed not merely in broad outline, but in tiniest detail, threatening disorders forecast to the very quarter of an hour. Was molasses spread upon the fresh- man pews in chapel, in order that the children might not wriggle in their restive seats? It was all carefully re- moved before the first stirrings of the college day, and Sam was performing his routine duties in quietness and the [25] fear of the Lord, with only a sly glance from the tail of his eye when a sopho- more chanced to pass. Was the read- ing room half filled with fresh new hay at Commencement time, that my guest might take his ease while taking his news? My guest took his news the next morning under the customary conditions of Spartan severity. Only once did the vision fail Sam, and even then not for long. One morn- ing in the spring of '95, when the stu- dents assembled for chapel, they were surprised to see the President seated behind a little table, instead of behind the old pulpit that had done duty for so many college generations. Of course the news quickly spread that the pulpit had disappeared during the night. After the first excitement no one took the matter very seriously, for we all ex- pected that our vigilant Sam would quickly trace it to its hiding place and restore it to the time-honored station in the chapel. In this view Sam himself probably shared. But as days went [26] by and no real clue was found, the strain became too much for Sam, and he went to some of the boys who he thought might know the whereabouts of the relic, confessed that he was com- pletely baffled, and cried like a child, or shall I say cried like a man, indignant tears, tears of humiliation. It was too much for the boys, and though they made no confession, a handsome new pulpit and a new chair for the President shortly appeared on the rostrum. Sam was comforted and he forgave but he did not forget. A year later, in the following spring, we were all surprised one morning to see the old pulpit once more in its accustomed place, with the new one beside it. It was found to have been deposited on the shore of the Kennebec above Augusta. Sam, who had suspected that it might have been thrown into the river, had taken the precaution to have the farmers along the river on the lookout, and thus had learned its whereabouts as soon as it was discovered. But never a boastful [27] word from Sam; the pulpit had been recovered his duty had been done and if he felt any personal elation he was canny enough to keep it to himself. Not only was Sam the detective force; he was also the judge, judex verissimus, sanctissimus, et justissimus plurimarum rerum. O fortunate com- monwealth, in which so goodly a man became judge by a happy natural selec- tion, and into which the vexatious problem of the recall never intruded itself! Of course some cases were so grave that the judge felt it necessary to refer them to the Supreme Court, but all ordinary misdemeanors were not so reported. These inferior court cases were handled quietly and with tact, and the judge enjoyed the confidence of the entire community. The Fac- ulty, for their part, were glad to be relieved from the annoyance of petty discipline, and, for our part, we were glad to reduce to a minimum the chances for the miscarriage of justice. Sam's authority, to be sure, rested only [28] upon tolerance and public opinion, but it was a public opinion enlightened and crystalized. Sam was qualified for this office by his good sense, his resourcefulness, and his secretiveness. Sam's secretiveness ! Somewhere in his brain must have been whole alcoves of dust-covered secrets, but the walls were adamantine, the keeper alone held a key, and he alone entered. I think he enjoyed wan- dering through these alcoves, dusting off an occasional treasure, and taking a bit of a look at it, but that is pure conjecture. If the college held the first place in Sam's affection, and the church the second, the Good Templars clearly held the third. For nearly forty years Sam was an enthusiastic worker in this temperance order. Occasionally he would be elected a delegate to some con- vention, and then the alumni would raise a fund to equip him and to pay his traveling expenses. These trips were epochs in Sam's life. At one time he was thus enabled to revisit the scenes of his boyhood. But the great trip was in 1902, when he was sent to Sweden to the International Convention. It was the proudest day of Sam's life when he bore the Stars and Stripes through the streets of Stockholm. On his return, every one was eager to hear of Sam's trip, and so he delivered a " lecture," heralded by posters and dodgers, by your leave, in the Baptist Church. It was a " capacity house," and Sam gave everybody his money's worth, both in subject-matter and in length of program. None of your par- simonious, forty-five minute lectures for Sam! Indeed, if the demands of the college had not necessitated its termination, it is doubtful if the lec- ture ever would have had a close. Though I could not hear the lecture, I was in Waterville the following sum- mer. I found Sam working under the willows along by the river, and we sat down on a log, hip to haunch, and had it out. Sam, it seems, was one of six [80] delegates, representing six different races, presented to the royal family. " Well, Sam," I asked, " did you have any conversation with them? " " Oh, yes, sah; I talked to de princess." "What did she say to you, Sam?" " She say to me, * Sam, how ole be you? ' " " And you replied? " " Oh, dat's for yoh to fine out, princess ; how ole be yoh? " And we both laughed until we cried about it, though for quite different reasons. Though Sam was too self -sustained to exact commendation or attention, he was nevertheless transported with hap- piness when praise was volunteered. Commencement, with its home-coming of the old boys, filled his cup of happi- ness to overflowing with this pleasant wine. I recall that at one of the Commencements in the late nineties, a speaker at the alumni dinner proposed a toast to Sam and placed upon the coat of the old negro, who was led in, limp with giggling expectancy, by a troop of the younger men, an enormous [31] metal badge, and announced that the thirty-third degree was thereby con- ferred. Neither Sam nor any one else asked so impertinent a question as "the thirty-third degree of what?" That was a thing to be felt, not to be impaired by definition. There was only one thirty-third degree that Sam could take just the thirty-third de- gree of Samhood. Needless to say, this badge became a cherished posses- sion and was worn on all state occasions. Sam's home was always a favorite resort with the students, for Maria, " Mother Osborne," as the boys of later years called her, shared in her husband's affection for the college and idolized the boys. She had learned the lessons of hospitality at the fountain head, and she did credit to her Southern training. Maria's shelves were laden with good things to the remotest corner of pantry and cellar. Maria was the very duchess of doughnuts and princess of pies, and we hungry boys were always [32] glad to pay homage. Thanksgiving and Christmas were particular occa- sions, when Sam and Maria threw out the net of hospitality and gathered in every homesick boy, and only released him after he had acknowledged Maria's absolute supremacy in every depart- ment of culinary achievement. It was indeed a household to visit. Sam and Maria had raised a large family of affectionate, interesting chil- dren, and it was a pleasant sight to see them before their cheerful fire of an evening, with their happy children grouped about them. Many an even- ing did we spend there, listening to Sam's stories of his boyhood, or to reminiscences of the college days of men now grown gray and famous. So essentially was Sam's life linked with the life of the college, so little was his buoyant spirit affected by the pass- ing years, so disarming was his opti- mism, that even when he was past seventy, it was easy to think that many years of service lay before him. ^ [33] Therefore the statement in the pro- visional Commencement announce- ments of 1903 that Sam was breaking came as a shock to the alumni. When Sam learned in the spring of that year that he had but a short time to live, his one great desire was to last until after Commencement, in order that he might see as many of his old friends as pos- sible. His strength of will doubtless had much to do with gratifying this desire, and he lingered until the first of July. His last days beautifully crowned his life. After the seniors* last chapel exercise, the gowned gradu- ates marched over to Sam's house and shook hands with the dying janitor. He was too weak for many words, but a characteristic smile of appreciation lit up the face of the old man as he shook each hand feebly and said, "Good-by, boys," and " Good-by, girls." It was a very touching scene. After it was all over, the large-hearted man broke down in tears. A many of the alumni as possible [34] came back to Commencement, and Sam was able to see most of them. A constant procession of alumni were going to and from Sam's house. If any question of the real love which the boys felt for him had ever existed in Sam's mind before that time, those Com- mencement days must have dispelled it. There were few unmoistened eyes when the President, in the course of the Baccalaureate sermon, said of the old janitor: " Our college has witnessed for many years the faithful service of our head janitor, whom all have re- spected and loved; respected for his faithfulness and devotion to the inter- ests of the college; loved, because of his gentle, warm, and confiding nature, because he has cared for the sick, chidden the erring, and encouraged all by his simple, pure, and unaffected Christian life." At the bedside of the dying man were all of the members of his family, the President of the college, and the pastor of the Baptist church. Early in the [85] day he expressed some anxiety that his son might not reach home for a parting word, and, on his arrival a few hours before his father's death, Sam talked with him about caring for his mother. To the last moment Sam showed his usual thoughtfulness for the comfort of others, and urged the friends about him to take rest and refreshment. His last words were " Good night." One day when Sam was discussing a certain piece of work which needed to be done at the house, and told his wife that he must do such-and-such a thing at the college first, Maria, half play- fully and half impatiently, replied, " I suppose if you was ded, you'd hev to go to de college fuhst." It was another instance of the truth being spoken in jest, for the funeral exercises were ap- propriately held in the college chapel. The mass of floral tributes from friends far and near were a final expression of the love which all who had known him felt for Sam. None was more signifi- cant than the heart of red and white [36] roses given by the Maine Central Rail- road, so very personal had Sam seemed to a supposedly impersonal corpora- tion. Among the pall bearers was the President of the Board of Trustees of the college. It was fitting that Sam should be laid to rest just as the sun was setting at the end of a summer day. Dear old Sam, I doubt not that if any of the Colby boys are worthy of your care, you are looking after them to-night. [37] University of California REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY SOUTHERN REGK 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. VHP mSSSBSSSSSSS* LIBRARY FACILIT A 000022572 2