^egcurds of tJie J^xeciitoi^s, 
 
 EMILY G. WILLISTON. 
 M. F. DICKINSON, JR.. 
 E. H. SAWYER. 
 A. L. WILLISTON.
 
 A DISCOURSE 
 
 COMMEMORATIVE OF 
 
 HON. SAMUEL WILLISTON, / 
 
 DELITERED IN THE 
 
 PAYSOK CHURCH AT EASTHAMPTON, 
 
 September 13, 1874, 
 
 AND ALSO IV 
 
 THE COLLEGE CHURCH AT AMHERST, SEPTEMBER 20. 
 
 By W. S. TYLER, 
 
 WILLISTON PROFESSOR OF CREEK IN AMHERST COLLEGE. 
 
 SPRUNGFIELD, MASS. : 
 
 CLARK W. BRYAN AND COMPANY, PRINTERS. 
 1874.
 
 n 
 
 DISCOURSE. 
 
 As we gather in this sacred place and come under 
 the shadow of this solemn occasion, the very air 
 we breathe seems to be full of voices. And it is 
 not the noise and tumult of the world — it is not 
 the speech of men or of angels — it is the voice of 
 God that speaks to us. And as we listen and strive 
 to hear and learn what He would say unto us, I 
 seem to hear, uttered as distinctly almost as with 
 an audible voice, such words as these : God only is 
 great ; God only is wise ; there is none good but one, 
 that is God. All flesh is as grass, and all the glory 
 of man as the flower of grass. The grass wither- 
 eth, and the flower thereof falleth away ; but the 
 word of the Lord endureth forever. Let not 
 the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let 
 the mighty man glory in his might ; let not the 
 rich man glory in his riches, but let him that 
 glorieth, glory in this, that he understandeth and 
 knoweth me ; that I am the Lord which exercise
 
 4 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 loving-kindness, judgment and righteousness, in the 
 earth. The righteous shall llourish like the palm 
 tree ; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. 
 Those that be planted in the house of the Lord, 
 shall flourish in the courts of our God. Blessed is 
 the man that feareth the Lord ; that delighteth 
 greatly in his commandments. Wealth and riches 
 shall be in his house, and his righteousness en- 
 dureth forever. A good man showeth favor, and 
 lendeth ; he will guide his affairs with discretion. 
 He hath dispersed ; he hath given to the poor ; 
 his righteousness endureth forever ; his horn shall 
 be exalted with honor. There is that scattereth, 
 and yet increaseth ; and there is that withhold- 
 eth more than is meet, but it tendeth to pov- 
 erty. The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he 
 that watereth, shall be watered also himself. Give, 
 and it shall be given unto you ; good measure, 
 pressed down and shaken together and running 
 over, shall men give into your bosom. For with 
 the same measure that ye mete withal, it shall be 
 measured to you again. It is required in stewards 
 that a man be found faithful. Who then is that 
 faithful and wise stCAvard, whom his lord shall 
 make ruler over his household. Blessed is that 
 servant whom his lord, when he cometh, shall find
 
 COMMEMOKATIYE DISCOURSE. 
 
 SO doing. Of a truth, I say unto you, he will 
 make him ruler over all that he hath. Blessed are 
 ye that soav beside all waters. Cast thy bread 
 upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many 
 days. If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, 
 and satisfy the afflicted soul ; then shall thy light 
 rise in obscurity and thy darkness be as the noon- 
 da}^ And the Lord shall guide thee continually and 
 satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy 
 bones : and thou shalt be like a watered garden 
 and like a spring of water whose waters fail not. 
 And they that be of thee shall build the old waste 
 places ; thou shalt raise up the foundations of 
 many generations ; and thou shalt be called, The 
 Repairer of the breach. The Restorer of paths to 
 dwell in. 
 
 All these Scriptures are naturally suggested by 
 the occasion which has called us together. They 
 are all more or less strikingly illustrated in the 
 life, or impressed upon us by the death of our 
 departed friend. God who, at sundry times, and 
 in divers -manners, wrote them in His word, noAV 
 repeats them, as it were, in our ears by His Prov- 
 idence. May He also, by His Spirit, write them 
 in our hearts. Either of them might furnish a 
 suitable and profitable theme for our special medi-
 
 6 COMMEMOKATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 tation at this hour. Each of them has occurred 
 in rapid succession as a proper text for this dis- 
 course. But none of them, perhaps, expresses in 
 so few and fitting words the characteristic life-work 
 of Samuel Williston — the mission which he seems 
 to have been sent into the world to accomplish — as 
 a part of the last passage which I have read. It 
 is found in the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah, and 
 the tweKth verse. 
 
 " Thou sJicdt raise up the foundations of many gen- 
 erations ; and thou shalt he called, The Repairer of 
 the hreach, The Restorer of pcdhs to dwell in'' Isa. 
 Iviii. 12. 
 
 And the lesson which the providence and the 
 word of God commend to our especial considera- 
 tion at this time is, The honor which is due to the 
 founders of institutions, especially institutions of 
 education and religion, for the benefit of many 
 generations. 
 
 The honor which is due to such men is seen, 
 
 1. In the high estimation in which they have 
 always been held, both by God and by mankind. 
 
 The two names, most honored of God in the his- 
 tory of the church and the world, are Moses and 
 Christ. And these are the names of the founders 
 and lawgivers of the Jewish and the Christian church.
 
 COMMEMOKATIYE DISCOUESE. 7 
 
 Next in honor to Moses in the Old Testament, 
 stand David and Solomon, of whom the one planned 
 and the other built the temple, and both instituted 
 the worship of the Sanctuary — both organized the 
 outward kingdom of God on earth, with its palace 
 on the literal Mount Zion, and its capital the 
 earthly Jerusalem. The most illustrious of all the 
 foUow^ers of Christ was Paul, the founder of so 
 large a part of the Apostolic churches. And while 
 these men have been so highly honored of God, 
 what names have been so widely known or so 
 highly exalted as these, among men ? Who of all 
 that have ever lived on earth, can compare w^ith 
 them in the extent, the power or the sacredness 
 of their influence ? 
 
 In profane history, again, what names have been 
 so honored in all ages and nations, as the found- 
 ers of states, of schools, and of religious institu- 
 tions. " The true marshalling of the degrees of 
 sovereign honors," says Lord Bacon, " are these : 
 Tn the first place are Conditores, founders of states. 
 In the second place, are Legislatores, lawgivers, 
 which are sometimes called second founders, or 
 Perpetui Principes, because they govern by their 
 ordinances after they are gone." Then follow in 
 regular gradation downwards, in the third place,
 
 8 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 liberators; in the fourth, mihtary defenders; and 
 last, civil rulers, all of Avhom the great philosopher 
 ranks below founders and lawgivers. Orpheus, 
 Amphion and Epimenides, among the founders of 
 religious rites and mysteries ; Minos, Lycurgus and 
 Solon, among the founders of states; and Socrates, 
 Plato and Aristotle, among the founders of schools, 
 must suffice as illustrious examples from ancient 
 history. For the time would fail us to tell of Zo- 
 roaster and Confucius, of Boodha and Brahma, of 
 Romulus and Numa, and the other teachers, law- 
 givers and institution-founders of antiquity, who 
 lived at so early an age, that the imagination of 
 men has almost clothed them with the attributes 
 of gods. Still less can we enumerate the lesser 
 lights that organized governments, inaugurated re- 
 lio'ions and founded schools, and so extended their 
 influence and perpetuated their memory in the 
 later periods. In Mediaeval and Modern history, 
 what o-reater names are there than those of Alfred 
 the Great and Charlemagne, Washington and Jef- 
 ferson ; and these are the names of founders at 
 once of states and schools, of nations and colleges, 
 of empires and universities. Such men as Clement 
 and Origen, the founders and teachers of the far- 
 famed school of Chi'istian learning at Alexandria,
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 9 
 
 and of the other catechetical schools and theologi- 
 cal seminaries of the early church, were among the 
 chief of the early Christian Fathers. There are 
 no names more hallowed in the Catholic church 
 than the founders of those monasteries which, with 
 all their sins, have the merit of keeping learning 
 and religion alive through the darkness and confu- 
 sion of the Middle Ages. The founders, too, of those 
 religious orders whose influence has been felt to 
 the remotest bounds of Christendom, what veneration 
 is felt for them by all good Catholics, from age to 
 age. The names of St. Benedict, St. Dominic, St. 
 Francis, and Ignatius Loyola, have been canonized 
 and embalmed in the religious societies which they 
 established. And the founders of sects and of 
 charitable and benevolent associations are scarcely 
 less honored and revered among Protestants. The 
 founders of the libraries, the scholarships and fel- 
 lowships, and the separate colleges at Oxford and 
 Cambridge, still live in those universities; their 
 portraits and statues occupy the most consjDicuous 
 places in the halls, colleges and libraries which 
 they established, and their names are still spoken 
 with pride and pleasure, as they have been for 
 centuries, by the noble youth who enjoy the ben- 
 efit of their liberality. The greatest and best of
 
 10 COMMEMOKATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 England's kings have been proud to identify their 
 memories with these fomidations. The good Queen 
 Phihppa founded Queen's College, and the queens 
 of England have ever since been, ex officio, its 
 patronesses. Christ Church College is the proud- 
 est monument of the proud Cardinal Wolsey — it 
 might well be said to be his only enduring monu- 
 ment ; and the other colleges bear up the names, 
 otherwise little remembered and seldom spoken, of 
 some of the chief dignitaries of the church and the 
 state. Who has not heard the names of Bodley 
 and RadclifE ? They are the synonyms of libraries 
 and books, wherever there are scholars. 
 
 In our own age and country, there is no surer 
 passport to immortal remembrance than to be iden- 
 tified with the origin and progress of those insti- 
 tutions of learning, charity and religion which are 
 the characteristic and chief glory of our times. 
 Here specification is needless ; for it were but to 
 enumerate the principal academies, colleges and 
 professional seminaries of New England— the chief 
 charitable and religious as well as literary and scien- 
 tific foundations of the country, so many of which 
 hallow and perpetuate the names of their founders. 
 Who can ever think of American inissions without 
 being reminded of Worcester and Evarts ? It is
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 11 
 
 honor enough for any man to have had anything 
 to do with originating the Home Missionary, Tract, 
 Bible, Temperance and Anti-Slavery Societies. What 
 American scholar, aye, and what American citizen 
 has not often repeated the names of Harvard and 
 Yale ? What educated man, nay, what intelligent 
 man, woman or child in the future periods of our 
 history will not be familiar with the names of Phillips 
 and Williston ? 
 
 The honor which is due to the founders of insti- 
 tutions, especially those of learning and religion, 
 may be seen 
 
 2. In the nature and value of these institutions. 
 
 An institution is the embodiment of a principle, 
 the organization and thus the multiplication and ex- 
 tension of a power, the incarnation and perpetua- 
 tion of a life. Sparta was a perpetuated Lycurgus 
 Athens was Solon embodied and endowed with a 
 kind of immortality. The Christian Church is the 
 body of Christ — is Christ living, suffering, dying, 
 rising again from age to age, and thus at length 
 triumphing and reigning on earth as in heaven. 
 A hospital with its succession of physicians and 
 nurses, a charitable society with its successive corps 
 of officers and agents and its undying ministries to
 
 12 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 the poor, the sick and the suffering, is a perpetnal 
 metempsychosis of Howard the philanthropist; only 
 it is a larger, richer, mightier Howard better trained 
 and better furnished for his work — the soul of How- 
 ard animating the body of a hundred-headed and 
 hundred-handed giant, and employing all its heads 
 and all its hands in agencies of beneficence, and 
 that giant perchance vested not only with ubiquity 
 but with immortality. A school well endowed, and 
 so sustained from generation to generation, is a 
 school-master that never dies. Eugby is Arnold 
 teaching and ruling in the hearts of his pupils long 
 after Arnold is dead. Phillips has ceased from his 
 labors, and his personal influence can no longer be 
 traced. Phillips Academy not only prolongs but 
 multiplies his labors, not only perpetuates but en- 
 larges his influence, not only transmits his wealth 
 but transmutes it into the fine gold of a classical and 
 Christian education. For while institutions are in- 
 carnations of ideas and principles, they may be, and 
 frequently are, spiritualizations of material forces, 
 transfigurations of gross earthly substances into 
 something quite ethereal and divine. An institu- 
 tion, like a manufacturing establishment, can put 
 in motion many hands instead of one or two, and 
 those of far more delicacy and dexterity than the
 
 COMMEMOEATIVE DISCOURSE. 13 
 
 fingers of the founder. An institution can perpetu- 
 ate the name and the influence of the intellio-ent 
 and excellent, but perhaps uneducated and person- 
 ally uninfluential manufacturer or merchant, in a 
 corps of elegant scholars and able teachers that will 
 fashion the minds, the morals and the manners of 
 scores, perhaps hundreds of youth in every genera- 
 tion till the end of time. Institutions, like skillful 
 enginery, employ natural agencies, subsidize aux- 
 iliary forces, and enlist powers and resources that 
 are more than human. 
 
 Institutions educate and control individual men. 
 They also fashion society, guide the church and 
 govern the nation. Institutions mark and make 
 civilization. Savages have no institutions, just as 
 they have no machines. Just in proportion as civil- 
 ization advances, institutions become more numer- 
 ous and complicated, more elevated and refined. 
 Every step of Chrisiian civilization is marked and 
 maintained, and in no small measure made by Chris- 
 tian schools, colleges, seminaries of learning, and 
 institutions of charity and benevolence. Institutions 
 mark and make progress. They link the past with 
 the present, and the present with the future. They 
 constitute an open channel of communication — nay, 
 a vital union and communion between the ages.
 
 14 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 They enrich each generation with the wisdom and 
 virtue of previous generations, and make the acqui- 
 sitions and resources of individuals the weaUh and 
 power of the state, the age and the race. 
 
 All these remarks, while they are true of insti- 
 tutions in general, apply with emphasis to institu- 
 tions of learning, especially when sanctified by 
 religion. These are emphatically the great conser- 
 vative and progressive, civiHzing and educating, 
 perpetuating and transfiguring powers of society ; 
 the living channels of communication between the 
 Ancient and the Modern, the Old World and the 
 New, the individual and his age and race. They 
 transmute the gold and silver and houses and lands 
 of the founder into the true riches of the mind 
 and heart, and then transmit them through the 
 ages and nations, thus enduing them with something 
 like ubiquity and immortality. They live on, though 
 founders and teachers die, and even after states 
 and nations have passed away ; as a tree lives on, 
 though its leaves fall from year to year, — lives 
 when planters and owners, one after another, pass 
 away, and not unfrequently still lives when the na- 
 tion and race that planted it and long ate its fruit, 
 have given place to others. "Aye be planting a 
 tree," was a precept of Scotch wisdom — if I mis-
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 15 
 
 take not, it was addressed to Jeanie Deans hy her 
 father in the Heart of Mid Lothian. " Aye be 
 planting a tree, Jeanie ; it will be growing when 
 you are asleep, it will live Avhen you are dead. 
 Those who come after you will sit under its shade 
 and eat of its fruit." So an institution of learning 
 and religion wdll still be growing and working 
 when its founder has ceased to toil or care for it 
 — will live long after he is laid in the grave ; it 
 will bear fruit at all seasons of the year and pro- 
 duce all manner of fruit, while, peradventure, its 
 very leaves will be for the healing of the nations. 
 Thus the libraries and museums at Alexandria 
 survived dynasties and outlived the Grecian and 
 Roman supremacy, educating all the while Jews 
 and Greeks, Asiatics, Africans and Europeans, 
 mediating between philosophy and revelation, and 
 propagating learning and religion together among 
 the leading minds of three continents. The schools 
 of the Byzantine grammarians formed the con- 
 necting link between the Ancient and the Mod- 
 ern civilizations, as Constantinople itself is the 
 bridge between the East and the West; and by pre- 
 serving the wisdom of the Ancients, they gave rise 
 to the revival of learning in Modern Europe. Even 
 the monasteries, with their libraries, kept alive the
 
 16 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 flickering torch of learning during the Dark Ages, 
 and thus helped to introduce the Reformation. For 
 while institutions of learning are the conservators 
 of the Old, they are no less emphatically the orig- 
 inators of the New. The revival of learning and 
 the reformation were both born and nurtured in 
 the Universities. The earliest and greatest of the 
 Reformers were monks and professors. 
 
 But it is, above all, the office of institutions of 
 learnino; to educate : to educate individuals and thus 
 to mould and fashion society ; to educate the mem- 
 bers, and especially the officers of the church, and 
 so to shape the character and history of the church 
 itself; to educate the citizens, and especially the 
 rulers of the State, and so to govern the State 
 and the Nation. They lay the foundations of so- 
 ciety, government and religion. They are truly, 
 what they are often called. Seminaries, that is, they 
 sow the seeds of ideas and principles; they shape 
 and train the germs of private and public life and ac- 
 tion ; they bend the twig of individual and national 
 character. The higher seminaries educate the lead- 
 ing minds, and thus teach and rule the masses. 
 They improve and perfect agriculture, commerce, 
 and all the useful arts l)y developing the sciences on 
 which they are founded. They purify the streams
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 17 
 
 of political, social, moral and religious life, by purify- 
 ing the fountain. Christian colleges and seminaries 
 formed the character of New England in the forming 
 period of her history, and New England, through 
 her own schools and colleges, and those which she 
 is founding all over the land, is ruling the church and 
 scovernino; the nation. New Eng-land, throui>:h her 
 own colleges and seminaries, and those which she is 
 setting up like light-houses on foreign shores, is 
 carrying on the missionary work, and laying the 
 foundations of society and government, education 
 and religion for " many generations " in every part 
 of the world. 
 
 The honor which is due to the founders of in- 
 stitutions, especially those of learning and religion, 
 may be seen 
 
 3. In the broad views, high aims, and rare wis- 
 dom and excellence of character by which such 
 men must be distinguished. 
 
 The founders of states and nations, the authors 
 of constitutions, codes of law, and forms of gov- 
 ernment, are, of course, few ; for few have either 
 the opportunity or the capacity to inaugurate such 
 institutions. It is not strange, therefore, that these 
 few should have been honored in all ages as the 
 
 3
 
 18 COMMEMOEATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 special favorites both of ecfi'tli and heaven. The 
 same is true also of the founders of new rites and 
 forms, sects and creeds in religion. But there is 
 almost unlimited opportunity to found churches, 
 schools, and all the various institutions of educa- 
 tion and religion, where they do not exist, or exist 
 only in a very imperfect form. And there are 
 more in our day than there ever were before, per- 
 haps, who prize and improve their privilege in 
 this respect. But they are still few in compar- 
 ison with the many who do not attain, or even 
 aspire to it — very few, in comparison with the 
 many, many wants of a growing country, an ad- 
 vancing church and a perishing world. And the 
 reason is obvious. It requires rare disinterested- 
 ness, and rare discernment. Few men have the 
 self-denial and self-sacrifice, and perhaps fewer still 
 the insight and the foresight, the far-seeing sagac- 
 ity, and the far-reaching wisdom, which must be- 
 long to the founders of such institutions. Most 
 men are absorbed in themselves or their families, 
 their relatives and friends. If they do not spend 
 all their energies and resources in looking out for 
 themselves and their immediate connections, their 
 own church, their own partj^, or, at the very largest, 
 their own country is the extreme limit of their
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 19 
 
 vision. At all events, there must be something local, 
 sectional, partial, exclusive, about an object that 
 appeals to them, or it has no charms for them; 
 and the more narrow and exclusive it is, the more 
 attractive it will be to nine-tenths of mankind. 
 
 Most men are absorbed in the present. They 
 never think of coming genesations and future ages. 
 They demand immediate results, quick returns, 
 speedy harvests. Comparatively few will plant an 
 orchard, or a single tree even, of which they can- 
 not expect themselves to gather the fruit — still 
 fewer a forest for the benefit of they know not 
 what future generation. Few are capable of dis- 
 cerning the oak in the acorn, and very few have 
 the patience to plant the acorn and watch and 
 wait for its slow development. 
 
 Most men look only on the outward appearance, 
 and can see only what is present and apparent to 
 the senses. Of charitable men, the great majority 
 would rather contribute for the supply of the wants 
 of the body, than to the education of the immortal 
 spirit, and prefer to meet the existing and perpet- 
 ually recurring necessities of the poor rather than 
 to seek ways and provide means for removing the 
 causes of poverty. Nations built prisons long ages 
 before they established schools ; and to this day
 
 20 C0]S1MEM0KAT1YE DISCOURSE. 
 
 nations and individuals are slower to endow col- 
 leges, than tliey arc to found almshouses and hos- 
 pitals. It is only a few men of rare discern- 
 ment — 
 
 Souls destined to o'crleap tlic vulgar lot, 
 
 And mould the world unto the scheme of God — 
 
 it is only such, who can pierce through the out- 
 ward phenomena to the inward and spiritual causes, 
 who can look beyond immediate and temporary 
 issues to remote and permanent results; who are 
 willing to plant seeds for others to gather the fruit; 
 who, in short, and in the language of our text, have 
 the wisdom and the power to " raise up tlie founda- 
 tions for many generations." It is, therefore, simple 
 even-handed justice to bestow rare honor on men 
 of such rare wisdom and virtue ; to perpetuate their 
 memories by making them commensurate with the 
 duration of the institutions which they have founded ; 
 to mete out to them a height of renown, a breadth 
 of esteem and a depth of veneration corresponding 
 with the breadth and length and height and depth 
 of tlieir foundations, and the comprehensiveness of 
 views and elevation of sentiments hy which they 
 were distinguished : it is right and proper that 
 those who have studied and labored and prayed 
 and denied themselves, and sacrificed themselves to
 
 COMMEMOEATIVE DISCOURSE. 21 
 
 educate and enrich the mmds and hearts of many 
 generations, should be enshrined in the grateful 
 and affectionate remembrance of men from age to 
 age. 
 
 On this princijDle, few will receive higher honor 
 than the founders of Christian colleges and semi- 
 naries of learning. And among the founders of 
 such institutions, few in this or in other lands, in 
 ancient or in modern times, deserve a higher place 
 in public estimation, than Samuel Williston. 
 
 The community generally, and especially the nu- 
 merous youth who have enjoyed the benefits of 
 his wisdom and munificence, will desire to know 
 something of the early life and history of a man 
 who has been so successful in business and made 
 such an exemplary use of his large acquisitions. 
 
 Samuel Williston was born in Easthampton, June 
 17, 1795. Thus his birthday was the twentieth 
 anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. He was 
 the son of Rev. Payson Williston, of Easthampton, 
 who was the son of Rev. Noah AVilliston, of West 
 Haven, Conn., who had four children, two sons, 
 both of whom were ministers, and two daughters, 
 both of whom were ministers' wives. On his father's 
 side he was own cousin to Rev. Richard Salter
 
 22 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 Storrs, D. D., of Braintree, and so akin, not only 
 to the Willistons and Storrses, but to the Paysons, 
 the Strongs, the Elys and the other illustrious clergy- 
 men whose names Professor Park has recently woven 
 like a garland about the brow of the Braintree 
 pastor. His mother, Mrs. Sarah Birdseye Williston, 
 was also the daughter of a Connecticut clergyman, 
 Rev. Nathan Birdseye, of Stratford. 
 
 His parents and grandparents were all remark- 
 able for their longevity. His father lived to the 
 age of 93, and his father to the age of 77 ; his 
 mother to the age of 82, and her father to his 103d 
 year — all thus exceeding the appointed limitu of 
 threescore years and ten, and all doubtless exem- 
 plifying the fifth commandment, which Paul calls 
 the first commandment with promise : " Honor thy 
 father and thy mother, that thy days may be long 
 upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." 
 Mr. Williston himself had almost reached the age 
 o£ fourscore years ; and yet with the humble piety 
 of the patriarch of Israel he could and would have 
 said: "Few and evil have the days of the years of 
 my life been, and have not attained unto the days 
 of the years of the life of my fathers in the days 
 of their pilgrimage." 
 
 His father will be remembered by some of this
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE . 23 
 
 audience, as he is well remembered by the speaker, 
 as one of the gentlest, kindest, loveliest men that 
 ever walked the earth, too modest to know his 
 own worth, too meek sometimes to assert his own 
 rights, almost too honest, unsuspecting, unselfish and 
 unworldly to hve in such a world as this ; not a 
 great man but, as every body would say, a good 
 man ; not an eloquent preacher, but his life a per- 
 petual and most eloquent sermon on the golden 
 rule, and his very face beaming with cheerfulness 
 and benignity on all around him. No wonder he 
 lived to be almost a hundred years old. I only 
 wonder that such a man should die at all ; and 
 when I returned from Europe and was told that 
 the good old man w^as gone, it seemed to me that 
 he must have been translated. Father Williston's 
 salary never amounted to $300. He had, however, 
 a settlement of £70, with which he bought a small 
 farm of thirty-three acres of poor land, whereon he 
 used to work in haying time and a few hours a 
 day at other seasons, to eke out a scanty subsist- 
 ence for his family. 
 
 Mrs. Williston, Samuel's mother, was born to be 
 a helpmeet to such a poor minister. This excellent 
 couple possessed, as husband and wife always should 
 possess, the qualities and habits that are mutually
 
 24 COMMEMOKATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 compensative the one to the other, so as together 
 to make a perfect whole. She was as mdustrious 
 and faithful in the parsonage as he was in the par-" 
 ish ; as economical as he was liberal ; as careful and 
 anxious as he was cheerful and happy ; a very Martha 
 for household care and thrift, though not without 
 Mary's part also in the one thing needful. While 
 he united in himself many of the characteristics of 
 both his parents, Samuel bore a striking resemblance 
 in person, mind and manners to his mother. Bound 
 by the customs of the age to exercise hospitality 
 as well as to provide things honest in the sight of 
 all men, I have heard her say that she often had 
 some ministerial brother, with his whole family, stop 
 for dinner, or perchance to stay over night, when 
 there was not enough in the whole house to give 
 them a single meal. Yet the dinner was always 
 forthcoming, the table comfortable and the whole 
 house in perfect order. The barrel of meal was 
 never quite empty, and the cruse of oil never failed. 
 Thus patient industry and strict economy were beau- 
 tifully wedded to generous hospitality and Christian 
 liberality in the household of the first pastor of 
 Easthampton, as they always joined hand in hand 
 and walked side by side in the life of his distin- 
 guished sou.
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 25 
 
 A family of six children were born in that par- 
 sonage, and all but one (who died in childhood) 
 * were brought up and educated on that salary, with 
 the help which they were taught to render to them- 
 selves and their parents — brought up to habits of 
 industry and economy, and educated in the prin- 
 ciples of virtue and piety ; and now there is 
 wealth enough in the family to cover every inch 
 of that poor farm over with dollars. Of his two 
 brothers, one was Dea. J. P. Williston of North- 
 ampton, the reformer and philanthropist, whose hu- 
 mane and Christian charities, beginning at home, 
 compassed the globe, dropping like the rain and 
 distilling like the dew on the dry and thirsty land. 
 The other, Dea. N. B. Williston, president of a bank 
 in Brattleboro, Yt., a man of like sj^irit with his 
 brothers, is the only surviving member of the famil}^ 
 Of his two sisters, one was the wife of J. D. Whit- 
 ney, Esq., of Northampton, and the mother of the 
 distinguished professors of that name ; the other was 
 the mother of the late Mrs. Dr. Adams of Boston. 
 
 Samuel, though the third child that was born to 
 his parents, was the oldest son that grew up to man- 
 hood. The trials and triumphs of his education and 
 his early business, and the story of his marriage, 
 constitute a romance in real life of rare interest
 
 26 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 and pathos. He began to go to school very young, 
 and attended the district school in his native place, 
 summer and winter, till he was ten years old ; then 
 in the winter only till he Avas sixteen, at which age 
 his schooling, as it was called, that is, his instruc- 
 tion in the common school, which then scarcely ex- 
 tended beyond reading, writing and the rudiments 
 of arithmetic, ceased altogether. He began to work 
 on a farm at the early age of ten, in the absence 
 of his father on a missionary tour of three months 
 in the State of New York. This first work was 
 done on the farm, and under the direction of a 
 good deacon in his father's church, Dea. Solomon 
 Lyman, whose memory he always held in high 
 esteem and veneration. After this he worked on a 
 farm every summer till he was sixteen, sometimes 
 on his father's, sometimes for some of his parish- 
 ioners, and the last of these summers out of town 
 in AYesthampton, where his wages were $7 a month. 
 These facts in his earl}^ life are not only of interest 
 by way of contrast with his subsequent prosperity, 
 but he was wont to attach great importance to these 
 early lal)ors as training him to habits of industry, 
 and still more as laying the foundations of that 
 bodily health and strength without which he was 
 persuaded he never could have accomplished his 
 life-work.
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOUESE. I i 
 
 After he ceased going to school, he studied to 
 some extent privately with his father, though 
 only in the winter, for he was obliged to work 
 in the summer. He loved study and longed for 
 a liberal education. But he saw no way, in which 
 he could obtain the requisite means. He there- 
 fore went into a clothier's shop belonging to a 
 brother-in-law in Rochester, Vt., where he la- 
 bored the greater part of two winters, till he 
 became master of the art to such an extent 
 that he was entrusted with the charge of the 
 shop. Meanwhile he lost no time, spent his even- 
 ings in reading, and made the most of all the 
 means of self-education within his reach. His de- 
 sire for a better education being thus increased, 
 on his return from Vermont, late in the winter 
 of 1813-14, he entered Westfield Academy. But 
 his funds were exhausted before he had com- 
 pleted a single term, and he came home again 
 to study with his father. Still encouraged by 
 his teachers and his parents, that where there was 
 a will there was a way, and that some way would be 
 found for him yet to go through college, he now 
 began to study Latin, which he pursued first with 
 his father and then with Kev. Mr. Gould, of 
 Southampton. In the summer of 1814, learning
 
 28 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 that there were funds at Anclover for the aid of 
 indigent students, and attracted by the excellence 
 of the institution, he went to Phillips Academy, 
 then under the principal charge of Kev. John 
 Adams, and enjoying the instructions also of Mr. 
 Hawes, afterwards Dr. Hawes, of the Centre Church 
 in Hartford, Conn. It took more time and more 
 money then to go to Andover than it does now. 
 Young Williston could not afford to go by stage, 
 then the only public conveyance. His father 
 therefore carried him one day's ride to Brookfield, 
 where, according to the hospitable and ministe- 
 rial usages of the times, they lodged at the house 
 of the pastor. The next day he walked to 
 Worcester. Fatigue then compelled him to ride 
 to Boston. From Boston he set out on foot again 
 for Andover, but caught a ride a part of the way 
 on a farmer's wagon. He had no trunlv, no valise 
 or carpet-bag ; all he had with him, pretty much 
 everything he had in the world, was tied up in a 
 bundle. At Andover, for the sake of economy, 
 though not disliking the long walk for its own 
 sake and for exercise, he boarded a mile and a half 
 from the Academy. Yet he w\as never tardy. He 
 never failed in a recitation. He went there to do 
 his best. He always did do the best that he could.
 
 COMMEMOEATIVE DISCOURSE. 29 
 
 He obeyed all the rules of the school. He ex- 
 celled in his studies. He went up at a step from 
 the Epitome of Sacred History over the class in 
 Viri Komae to the class in Selectae a Sacris et 
 Profanis, and on examination at the close of his 
 first term, he was placed upon the foundation as 
 a charity scholar. Now he had reached a point 
 from which he thought he could see the goal of 
 his ambition, a college education. Now he was 
 satisfied and regarded his fortune as made, or at 
 least quite secure. But severer trials awaited him. 
 He had not been there a year when his eye-sight 
 failed him, and he was obliged to leave. For two 
 years, now, from the spring of 1815 to that of 
 1817, he vibrated between labor on the farm and 
 a clerkship in a store, passing the larger part of 
 the time in the store, but with intervals of two 
 or three months on the farm, suffering all the 
 while from weakness, inflammation and incessant 
 pain in the eyes, till at length he gave up all 
 hope of being or doing anything that could sat- 
 isfy his ambition. He made up his mind — this 
 is the way in which he was in the habit of speaking 
 of it — that he must be a farmer, and a poor man 
 at that. These years, however, were by no means 
 lost to him. In the store of Justin Ely of West
 
 30 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 Springfield, and still more in the large wholesale 
 establishment of Francis Child of New York city, 
 with whom he spent a year, he was acquiring that 
 knowledge of men and things, and forming those 
 ideas and habits of business which were after- 
 wards to be of such essential service to him in 
 the management of his own affairs. Moreover it 
 was during this period, under the discipline of re- 
 peated disappointments and sore trials, accompa- 
 nied by the effectual teaching of the Holy Spirit, 
 that he began life anew as a Christian, and after 
 a severe inward struggle, w^hich began soon after 
 leaving Andover and ended in submission and peace 
 just before going to New York, he consecrated 
 himself publicly to the service of God as a mem- 
 ber of the Presbyterian church under the pastoral 
 care of Kev. Dr. Spring. 
 
 In the spring of 1817, at the age of 22, baffled 
 in all his plans by the failure of his eyes, and 
 almost disheartened by the double disappointment 
 consequent upon it, first in regard to a college 
 education, and then in his experiments in the mer- 
 cantile line, he came back to his father and pro- 
 posed to him to go into the farming business; the 
 father to furnish the farm and the capital, and the 
 son to manage it and do the work. The father
 
 COMMEMORATIYE DISCOURSE. 31 
 
 reluctantly consented, invested some four or five 
 hundred dollars from his father's estate, in the 
 purchase of land, taking the deed of it in his own 
 name, and then borrowed money for the purchase 
 of more land and implements of husbandry. Thus 
 unpromising was the commencement of Mr. Willis- 
 ton's business life, without capital, almost without 
 anything that he could call his own, and having 
 run his father in debt for the very tools with 
 which he was to do his work. He continued to 
 follow farming as his business four years, enlarging 
 the farm and extending the business, varying it 
 also by raising sheep and growing fine wool, till he 
 ' became, for that place and those times, quite a 
 large farmer and wool-grower. He worked on the 
 farm himself, however, only in the summer. In 
 the winter, he betook himself to that unfailing re- 
 source of intelligent and aspiring youth of both 
 sexes in Yankee land, teaching school. The first 
 winter, he taught in the North district in East- 
 hampton, for $16 a month, boarding himself and 
 walking more than a mile to and from school, and 
 doing all the chores at home, morning and evening. 
 The next year, he taught the large scholars in the 
 Center district at Southampton, taking, in the 
 spring, the place which had been filled by a col-
 
 32 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 leffe student in the winter. The followino' winter, 
 he taught five months in NorthaniiDton. He next 
 taught, in the years 1820-21, for fourteen months 
 consecutively, the grammar school in Springfield, 
 at the same time managing the farm and carrying 
 on the work with hired help, and the aid of his 
 younger brothers. During the winter of 1821-22, 
 he taught a select school in Easthampton. 
 
 In the spring of 1822, (May 27,) he was married 
 to Miss Emily Graves, daughter of Elnathan Graves, 
 a respectable farmer, in moderate circumstances, in 
 the neighljoring town of Williamsburg. They had 
 been engaged three years previous, the marriage 
 being delayed from economical and prudential con- 
 siderations. Partly to illustrate the simplicity of 
 the times, and jiartly to show his own limited 
 means, 1 have heard him say that he was married 
 in a coat wdiich he had worn two years for Sun- 
 days and holidays, and that they took no bridal 
 tour or excursion after the marriage. Or, to tell 
 the story more exactly, their only bridal excursion 
 was to Rum Brook, at the foot of Mount Tom, in 
 Easthampton, where they had a bottle of wine and 
 some plain cake for their entertainment. Ahnost 
 half a century afterwards, happening to call upon 
 them on the forty-eighth anniversary of their mar-
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 33 
 
 riage, I found them preparing to celebrate it at 
 the same place in the same beautiful and simple 
 way. Are the brides and grooms of our day, who 
 think they must cross the ocean, or mayhap go 
 round the world for their bridal tour — are they 
 wiser or happier than this worthy couple ? He 
 brought his wife home to the house of his father, 
 and the two families lived together under the same 
 roof in beautiful harmony and mutual love for 
 twenty-one years, only enlarging the old parson- 
 age and beautifying the grounds to correspond with 
 the growth of business and their increasing pros- 
 perity. 
 
 He still taught one year, after being married, in 
 the Central district school in Easthampton, thus mak- 
 ing five winters in all, besides the entire year of his 
 teaching in Springfield. Meanwhile the farming 
 business w^ent on, enlarging, as we have said, and 
 on the whole prospering. But he was obliged to 
 run in debt at the outset. This debt was still 
 further increased for the sake of enlarging the 
 business. He had invested in land and sheep, 
 $1,800, most of which was borrowed capital. His 
 first crop of wool was lost through the failure of 
 the purchaser. Two or three hundred dollars a 
 year was all that could be saved for repairing this 
 
 5
 
 34 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 loss and reducing this burden of indebtedness. 
 Mrs. Williston has remarked, that at this time it 
 was a daily subject of prayer at the domestic altar 
 that God would open to him ways and means by 
 which he might obtain a competence for himself 
 and family. And now, at length — doubtless in an- 
 swer to those very prayers, and as the result too 
 of the severe discipline to which he had been sub- 
 jected — the way was to be opened. And the re- 
 lief was to come through the wife whom God had 
 given him to be not only his companion and help- 
 meet in general, but his wise counselor and his 
 good genius in that very thing which he had so 
 often made a subject of special prayer. Mrs. Wil- 
 liston had never felt able to keep the help she 
 needed in housekeeping, nor to give what she 
 wished in aid of charitable objects. While looking 
 about for relief and enlargement in these particu- 
 lars, she found that her mother had been in the 
 habit of making covered buttons for her own fam- 
 ily, and a smalt surplus for sale to others. She 
 took up the business at once on a somewhat larger 
 scale. The first package of buttons which she 
 made, she took to Mr. David Whitney, of North- 
 ampton, (long the Treasurer of the Hampshire 
 County Missionary Society,) as a contribution of
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOUESE. 35 
 
 the first-fruits to tlie cause of missions; and Pres- 
 ident Humphrey, happening in about that time, 
 became the first purchaser. Little did he or she 
 think, that there was the germ of Williston Sem- 
 inary and Wilhston College. 
 
 A button machine ought to be graven on the 
 seal of one, if not both of these institutions ; and 
 the founders should be represented by a double 
 bust of Mr. and Mrs. Williston, not set back to 
 back like some of the old Greek sculptures, but put- 
 ting their heads and hands together in the manufac- 
 ture of covered buttons. Then if Christian art could 
 in some way represent the work of missions and 
 the kingdom and glory of God in full view before 
 their eyes, illumining their pathway, irradiating 
 their persons, and making their upturned faces 
 shine with the light of heaven, the picture would 
 be quite complete. 
 
 But to return to our narrative. The second pack- 
 age was sent to Arthur Tappan, of New York, who 
 immediately contracted for twenty-five gross at two 
 dollars a gross. Fifty dollars ! Never in all their 
 subsequent wealth did they feel so rich as when they 
 received that order from the firm of Arthur Tappan. 
 The first buttons Mrs. Williston made with her own 
 hands. Then she employed other hands to work for
 
 3G COMWEMORATIYE DISCOURSE. 
 
 her in the house. Next she began to give out but- 
 tons to be made in neighboring families. Mr. Wilhs- 
 ton soon perceived that here was a field of enterprise 
 wider and more promising than farming, and that 
 instead of making her time and toil merely subsid- 
 iary to his work, he might better make his minis- 
 ter to hers. It was in 1826, when he was already 
 more than thirty years of age, that the beginning 
 was made of this new undertaking. In 1827, he 
 went to New York, found customers, received 
 orders, and went back to extend his business. 
 Soon he went in like manner to Philadelphia, Balti- 
 more and Boston, and established agencies in all the 
 principal cities of the United States. The business 
 grew rapidly, and it was only a short time, before he 
 had more than a thousand families at work making 
 buttons for him, through all that circle of towns, 
 thirty or forty miles in diameter, of which East- 
 hampton Avas the center. Auxiliary to the button 
 business, he opened a store, and, for a number of 
 years, carried on quite a large business for the 
 country, in the sale of dry goods, his first clerk 
 being Mr. Knight, and Mrs. Williston his first book- 
 keeper. 
 
 The manufacture went on in this way by hand, 
 employing thousands of busy and skillful fingers
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 37 
 
 in a constantly extending circle of private families, 
 and rewarding their industry with a corresponding 
 increase of the comforts and elegancies of life, 
 for ten or a dozen years, when Providence opened 
 the way for a still greater improvement and en- 
 largement. In one of his visits to New York, 
 Mr. Williston found there some buttons of Eno;lish 
 manufacture, made without thread, without needle, 
 I had almost said without fingers, in short, mani- 
 festly made by machinery. He took these buttons 
 to the Messrs. Joel and Josiah Hayden, who were 
 then just beginning to be known as ingenious and 
 enterprising mechanics in Williamsburg, and pro- 
 posed to furnish the capital, sell the goods and 
 divide the profits equally, if they would discover 
 the process, get up the machinery and manufac- 
 ture the buttons. They entered with characteris- 
 tic zeal and energy upon the experiment, and 
 worked on patiently with hands and brains for 
 years before their labors were crowned with 
 complete success. It was a full year before they 
 could make a button. When they had succeeded 
 to some extent, they derived great assistance from 
 a colored man who had been an employee in an 
 English factory and knew the machinery and the 
 process. Whether the memory of this timely ser-
 
 38 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 vice was, in any measure, the cause of their life-long 
 friendship for the colored race, or whether Provi- 
 dence sent this man to serve them in return for 
 what it was already in their hearts to do for the 
 cause of humanity and to furnish them the means 
 for more enlarged philanthropy in coming years, 
 I do not know. But I can not but see in this 
 incident, as well as in the connection of Arthur 
 Tappan and President Humphrey with this enter- 
 prise, not only interesting coincidences, but illus- 
 trations of that almost poetical justice and fitness 
 which the Greeks w^ere so fond of noting, and 
 which no close observer can fail to mark, some- 
 times at least, in the providence of God. 
 
 The perfecting of this machinery and the suc- 
 cessful carrying on of the manufacture made the 
 fortunes of both parties. It was the making — 
 it was, at least, the beginning of Ilaydenville. It 
 has since done the same service to Easthampton. 
 Mr. Williston used often to speak of the perfect 
 harmony and happiness of his business relations 
 with Mr. Hayden — a harmony which was ex- 
 pressed and increased by their traveling in Europe 
 together, and at length still farther cemented by 
 a marriage connection between the families. This 
 harmonious co-operation continued without interrup-
 
 COMMEMOKATIVE DISCOURSE. 39 
 
 tion, twelve years, till in 1847, by mutual consent, 
 the partnership was dissolved, and, at once for the 
 personal convenience of Mr. Williston and for the 
 benefit of his native place, the button business was 
 transferred to Easthampton. 
 
 We have dwelt on these earlier years of Mr. 
 Williston's business life with a particularity which 
 may perhaps require some apology. He was a 
 business man, and it is as an able and success- 
 ful business man that we wish to know his his- 
 tory. These earlier years of his life are unknown 
 to the younger portion of the community, and 
 have more or less faded from the memory of the 
 older inhabitants. While they developed his char- 
 acter and formed his habits, they illustrate also 
 the providence of God. While they set before us 
 a remarkable example of patience and perseverance, 
 of faith and hope in God, finally triumphing and 
 rejoicing in the manifest blessing of heaven, they 
 forcibly teach this great lesson, that we should 
 never despise small things — that nothing is in re- 
 ality small, since things apparently the smallest may 
 lead to the greatest results. 
 
 It w^as when he was a little over forty that 
 Mr. Wilhston began to lay "foundations" and build 
 not only for himself but for his native town and
 
 40 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 for the larger public. In 1837 he bore a promi- 
 nent part in the erection of the house of worship 
 no\v occupied by the first church in Easthampton. 
 In 1841 he established Williston Seminary. In 
 1843 he built his own house. Early in 1845 he 
 founded the Williston Professorship of Rhetoric 
 and Oratory in Amherst College. Later in the 
 same year, he spent six months in traveling in 
 Europe. In the winter of 1846-7 he founded the 
 Graves Professorship, now the WiUiston Professor- 
 ship of Greek, and one-half of the Hitchcock Pro- 
 fessorship of Natural Theology and Geology in 
 Amherst College, thus making in all the sum of 
 $50,000, which he had already given for perma- 
 nent foundations in that institution. 
 
 It was in 1847 that he removed his business 
 from Haydenville to Easthampton. From that time 
 to the present, we need not dwell on the details 
 of his private life, for they are fresh in the memory 
 of us all. I need not remind you how he went 
 on adding factory to factory and one species of 
 business to another, house to house, block to block, 
 and even village to village, till from one of the 
 smallest, Easthampton has become one of the larg- 
 est and most populous towns in Hampshire county. 
 I need not tell you how he has built churches,
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE, 41 
 
 and enlarged the grounds and multiplied the edi- 
 fices of Williston Seminary, and increased the funds 
 and the faculty of the Seminary and of Amherst 
 College, and extended and diffused his donations for 
 public, charitable, educational and religious objects, 
 corresponding with the increase of his wealth and 
 the demands of the times, till his name has become 
 identified with all the great benevolent enterprises 
 of the age, and his influence is felt all over the 
 world. 
 
 Mr. Williston has filled not a few posts of honor 
 and trust. He was a member of the Lower House 
 of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1841, and a 
 member of the Senate in 1842 and 1843. He was 
 elected to the Legislature as an Anti-Slavery Whig, 
 and might doubtless have continued to occupy and 
 adorn public life, if he had not, after three years' 
 legislative service, declined a re-election. In poli- 
 tics, he has always been known as belonging to the 
 school of progress and reform. He was usually in 
 advance of his party and of the age, a full believer 
 in the doctrine of the higlier law, and the applica- 
 tion of Christian ethics to the legislative, executive 
 and judiciary departments of the government, and 
 therefore sometimes charged with political heresy 
 and fanaticism, though he was never an impracti- 
 
 6
 
 42 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 cable or an oxtreiiiist. In the great struggle for 
 the mtegrity and existence of the nation, he was 
 ever among the firmest supporters of the govern- 
 ment, and among the most strenuous advocates for 
 the extinction of slavery as the chief cause of all 
 our troubles. While a member of the Legislature, 
 in 1841, he was chosen by that body a trustee of 
 Amherst College. For thirty- three years, the aver- 
 age duration of human life, and throughout one 
 entire generation, he has not only been a member 
 of the Corporation, but during the larger part of 
 these years a member also of the Prudential Com- 
 mittee and often of special committees on build- 
 ings and business matters of the utmost import- 
 ance, and until the recent failure of his health he 
 was from principle an unfailing attendant of ordi- 
 nary and extraordinary meetings of the board, and 
 unsparing not only of his mone}^, of which he gave 
 during his life a hundred and fifty thousand dollars 
 from time to time as it was wanted, and would do 
 the most good, but also of his time, which, for a 
 man of business and wealth, it is often far more diffi- 
 cult to give than money. For the same number of 
 years he has been not only trustee, but president 
 of the trustees of Williston Seminary, and with 
 only two exceptions, the one occasioned by sickness
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOUESE. 43 
 
 and the other by absence from the country, he has 
 presided in all the meetings. He has been the act- 
 ing treasurer also of the Seminary, and has watched 
 over all its external and internal affairs with the 
 same wise and careful personal supervision which 
 he has given to his business. Appointed by the 
 Governor and Council one of the first trustees of 
 the State Reform School, when that office was no 
 sinecure, he was of great service in erecting build- 
 ings, improving the farm and inaugurating the insti- 
 tution. He was one of the first trustees of Mount 
 Holyoke Seminary, of which he helj)ed to lay the 
 foundations, and in which he ever felt a lively 
 interest. He was a corporate member of the Ameri- 
 can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 
 and for many years as constant in attendance on 
 its meetings as he was in contributions to its funds. 
 
 The business corporations, manufacturing com- 
 panies, banks, railways, gas and water power com- 
 panies in Easthampton, Northampton, Holyoke and 
 elsewhere, in which he was a leading corporator, 
 and usually president, are too numerous to men- 
 tion. 
 
 Mr. Williston's domestic life was marked by great 
 trials as well as great blessings, and had a most 
 important bearing on his character and history. For
 
 44 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 four years after their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Wil- 
 liston lived vitliout children. In 1831, they lost 
 two children, then three and a half and one and a 
 half years old, by scarlet fever. In 1837, they were 
 called to experience the same deep affliction again 
 in the loss, and by the same disease, of two children 
 who had reached the age respectively of five and a 
 half and three and a half. They were thus written 
 childless twice in the space of six years, and have 
 never since had children of their own. But they 
 have adopted the children of missionaries and chil- 
 dren who had been bereaved of their parents, whom 
 they have reared and educated as their own ; and 
 few families, probably, have enjoyed more domestic 
 happiness than theirs. And what is more, schools 
 and churches and charitable societies without num- 
 ber have become their adopted children, have been 
 nursed and cherished by them with a father's and 
 a mother's love and made heirs to their inheritance. 
 It was during the sickness of his last child that Mr. 
 AVilliston, feeling that he had not done his whole 
 duty as a steward of the Lord's property, conse- 
 crated himself anew to his service, set apart the 
 principal and interest of a considerable investment 
 for benevolent purposes, and thus entered on a 
 new epoch in his Christian life.
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 45 
 
 The son and grandson of parents and grandpa- 
 rents, who were not only Christians but ministers 
 of the gospel, Mr. Williston early received the 
 most careful Christian culture and training. He 
 read the Bible through a great many times in his 
 childhood and youth — he usually read it through 
 every year. He was taught the Assembly's Cate- 
 chism, and not only said it from memory to his par- 
 ents at home, but according to the usage of the times, 
 recited it in school every Saturday forenoon, and 
 repeated it from beginning to end, over and over 
 again in the church. He observed the Sabbath 
 with great strictness, and carefully avoided pro- 
 fanity and immorality of every kind. He not only 
 prayed in secret but led the- family devotions at 
 his boarding-place in Andover, before he cherished 
 any hope of his personal interest in the salvation 
 by Christ. We might have expected such a young 
 man, so moral, upright and amiable, to enter upon 
 a religious life, without any great conflict or deep 
 conviction of sin. But this was far from beino- 
 the case. He was often much exercised about per- 
 sonal religion, l)ut on his return from Andover, 
 disappointed in his hopes of education, and thwarted 
 in his plans for life, he passed through a severe 
 mental struggle, came under deep conviction of sin,
 
 46 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 felt liimself to be justly condemned by the law of 
 God, and, in liimself, utterly ruined and undone ; 
 and lie continued in this state for months. It was 
 almost a year before he became clear in his belief 
 that he Avas a real Christian. There was no par- 
 ticular time to w^hich he could point as the begin- 
 ning of his religious life. Light and peace gradually 
 dawned upon his soul. Sudden and rapturous joy 
 was no part of his Christian experience. This 
 great event — for so he regarded it, though there was 
 nothing very marked about the time or the manner 
 of it — took place in 1816. Going to New York soon 
 after, he heard with great satisfaction, the preaching 
 of Dr. Romeyn, Dr. Mason and Dr. Spring, and in 
 the winter of 1816-17, he became a member of Dr. 
 Spring's church. When he left the city, he trans- 
 ferred his relation to the church under his father's 
 care in Easthampton, and in 1852 he went off with 
 others to form the Payson Church. He was for many 
 vears a member of the committee, and a deacon in 
 the First Church, and in the Payson Church he held 
 both those offices from the beginning. He never 
 felt that he could serve God by proxy, however 
 numerous might be the agents whom he supported 
 in the Christian work ; and munificent as his con- 
 tributions were to the maintenance and propagation 

 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOUESE. 47 
 
 of the gospel, he never thought or desired by this 
 to purchase any exemption from personal service. 
 At home and abroad, till the age of threescore 
 years and more, he rarely failed to attend three 
 services on the Sabbath, and the remainder of the 
 day he scrupulously spent in religious reading, 
 meditation and prayer. At home or abroad, he 
 never traveled or visited, wrote letters or trans- 
 acted any business on the Lord's day; never spent 
 the day, or any portion of it, in walking, talking, 
 riding, in any mere recreation or amusement. 
 When he was all ready to commence his voyage 
 to Europe, the vessel on which he had engaged 
 his passage, and expected to sail about the middle 
 of the week, was detained two or three days by 
 a violent storm. Sabbath morning the weather 
 was fair, and the captain, crew and passengers 
 were all eager and impatient to spread sails. But 
 Mr. Williston refused to embark on the Lord's 
 day, although, according to usage, he thereby for- 
 feited his passage money as well as delayed his 
 passage. The captain, however, at length yielded 
 to his convictions and convenience ; they sailed 
 Monday morning, and reached Liverpool in ad- 
 vance of all the vessels that sailed from New York 
 on the previous Sunday. On the same principle.
 
 48 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 lie chose to be left at a comfortless way station 
 midway over the Alps at midnight Saturday night, 
 rather than to contmue his journey on the Sabbath. 
 He reverenced the Sabbath and the sanctuary. He 
 was planted in the house of the Lord, and he flour- 
 ished in the courts of our God. 
 
 If we turn now from this outline of his private, 
 public and religious life to a consideration of some 
 of the chief elements of his character and useful- 
 ness, the first question which will spontaneousl}^ 
 arise in most minds will be, what was the secret 
 of his success in business. 
 
 The secret of what he did lay in what he was, 
 as is always true, especially of men who do much, 
 and the foundation of what he was, was laid, of 
 course, in the nature which God gave him. He 
 inherited from his parents a good physical and 
 mental constitution. He had a healthy Ijody, an 
 attractive person, and a well-balanced mind. In child- 
 hood and youth his mind and manners were culti- 
 vated in good schools, but still more in the best 
 society; for there is no better society than that 
 which gathers about the fireside of a New Eng- 
 land pastor and forms the circle in which he 
 moves. He always mourned his loss of a classical 
 education, and was disposed to depreciate himself
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 49 
 
 unduly in comparison with educated men. This 
 felt want of the education of the schools was in- 
 tensely aggravated in his own view by the early 
 failure and perpetual weakness of his eye-sight. 
 Never after he was of age was he able to read 
 through a book or an article. Never during all 
 his business and public life could he read his o's\ti 
 correspondence, a newspaper, or even a chapter of 
 the Bible. But he triumphed over all these ad- 
 verse circumstances, and wrested wisdom, in spite 
 of fate, from the very clutches of necessity. Mrs. 
 Williston read everything to him and for him ; the 
 ear took the place of the eye, oral of written in- 
 struction, somewhat as in the primitive ages ; he 
 remembered whatever he heard, and was remark- 
 ably well informed on all subjects of general and 
 practical interest. He educated himself by the 
 discipline of necessity, and the rub and polish of 
 intelligent work, and the attritions of business, and 
 association with cultivated men and women, and 
 observation of men and things, and travel in his 
 own country a:^d in foreign lands, and faithful im- 
 provement of every opportunity for learning and 
 general culture. Thus he acquired an education that 
 fitted him better than any mere book knowledge 
 for the work to which he was called, and qualified 
 
 7
 
 50 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOUESE. 
 
 him, not indeed to shine in the pulpit, or on the 
 platform, or in the popular assembly (for he was 
 neither born nor trained to be an orator), but to 
 adorn private, social and public life. 
 
 A benignant countenance, a commanding and yet 
 winning presence, gentle speech and courteous man- 
 ners were no unimportant elements of his power and 
 influence. He was a gentleman, not only in the par- 
 lor and the social circle, but in the office, in the 
 bank, on the street, and in all his business relations. 
 His gentle manners and winning ways attracted 
 strangers, won the hearts of his workmen, and pre- 
 disposed merchants and manufacturers to transact 
 business with him. He had an eye for beauty. He 
 cultivated a taste for architecture and works of art. 
 As his means enlarged, his style of dress, his 
 manner of living, his house and furniture and 
 grounds were attractive as became a gentleman in 
 his station, and he adorned his native place with 
 public edifices in which utility and beauty were 
 most happily combined. 
 
 The haljits of economy and industry, in which 
 he was brought up from his childhood, and to 
 which he adhered through all his subsequent life, 
 were among the most obvious and direct means 
 of his prosperity. He never wasted either time
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 51 
 
 or money. At the summit of his wealth and lib- 
 erahty, he was never above the practice of econ- 
 omy; and with good reason, for economy was the 
 very foundation both of his wealth and his liber- 
 ality. Even so our Lord, after feeding thousands 
 miraculously with a few loaves and fishes, bade his 
 disciples " Gather up the fragments that remain, 
 that nothing may be lost." He was always a man 
 of indefatigable industry. In his early life, he 
 worked hard with his hands; in middle life and 
 old age, he worked equally hard with his mind. 
 Like the celebrated painter, he mixed all his colors 
 with brains. Till he had passed the prime of life, 
 he used to rise at five and breakfast at six ; then 
 followed the devotions of the family and the closet, 
 which he never omitted, however great the pres- 
 sure and hurry of business. Then he would fol- 
 low his business, or rather lead it, all day long, 
 working as many hours as any day laborer; and 
 in the evening, he was always busy answering 
 letters, reading newspapers and useful books, or 
 rather hearing them read, and devoting to the im- 
 provement of his mind, and the acquisition of use- 
 ful knowledge, every moment that was not due to 
 domestic, social and religious duty. He was never 
 too old to learn, and never too rich to be industrious.
 
 52 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOUESE. 
 
 This indefatigable industry was accompanied and 
 made effectual by indomitable perseverance and 
 unconquerable resolution. He always considered and 
 reconsidered any new enterprise of importance be- 
 fore he undertook it, weighed it carefully in his 
 own mind and in his own room, where there was 
 nothing to disturb his dehberations, consulted oth- 
 ers if it was a matter that admitted and required 
 consultation, and took counsel with God in re- 
 peated seasons of prayer. When he had thus de- 
 cided upon an undertaldng, he executed it with 
 unhesitating promptness and irresistible firmness. 
 Nothing could then stop him but absolute impos- 
 sibilities. There was no such word as cant in his 
 vocabulary, but / will, or I'll try, was on every page 
 of his dictionary. If the roof of the seminary build- 
 ing blew oft" in the night, the next morning the 
 men and the materials were engaged, perchance on 
 hand, for replacing it. If the church was burned 
 to the ground, or almost demolished by the fall 
 of the steeple, nothing was to be done but to re- 
 build it at once in better style than ever. If a 
 mill-dam was swept away the first time the water 
 was let in, and the quicksands rendered it im- 
 practicable to rebuild it on the same spot, it 
 could and should be constructed a little higher up
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOUESE. 53 
 
 the stream ; and it was done at an expense of 
 twenty or thirty thousand dollars ; but it brought 
 him hundreds of thousands in the end. These two 
 things, caution and deliberation in deciding, and 
 then promptness and firmness in executing — these 
 two things he was accustomed to consider the 
 main secret of his success in business. 
 
 There are two other things which stand in a 
 similar relation to each other, which I cannot but 
 think, were scarcely less conducive to his great 
 prosperity. The first is, that he attended to his 
 own business. He not only oversaw and directed 
 the whole, but he looked with his OAvn eyes into 
 the minutest details. Perhaps he carried this to 
 an unnecessary minuteness that was exhausting to 
 himself and tedious to his factors and agents. I 
 have heard this criticism. But he was fully per- 
 suaded that it was essential to success. And Frank- 
 lin seems to have been of the same opinion : 
 
 He that by the plow would thrive, 
 Himself must either hold oi- drive. 
 
 Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take 
 care of themselves. I have no doubt that the con- 
 stant presence of his eye and his hand was worth 
 thousands of dollars to his business, every year, to
 
 54 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 the very last year of his Ufe. The vakie of that 
 constant presence and mflucnce not only to his 
 business, but to the town, to the Seminary, and 
 even to Amherst College, we can fully appreciate, 
 like many of our richest blessings, only by its 
 loss. I am confident we shall all estimate it far 
 higher ten years hence than we do to-day. 
 
 While he was thus watchful and careful in the 
 supervision of his own affairs, in beautiful equipoise 
 with this, like those centripetal and centrifugal 
 forces which preserve the equilibrium of the ma- 
 terial universe, he was not less remarkable for the 
 wisdom and skill with which he selected and em- 
 ployed the agency of others. He had a rare power 
 of discerning character. He seldom mistook in his 
 judgment of men. I have myself had a great 
 deal to do with him in canvassing the merits of 
 teachers and preachers; and I have always been 
 struck with his wisdom and discernment. In the 
 sphere of his own business, his judgment would, 
 of course, be still more unerring. He always 
 thought himself fortunate — I think he was also wise 
 — in obtaining the very best men, at once capable 
 and faithful, for partners, superintendents, agents 
 and employees of every kind in his business. And 
 this, in my opinion, was among the main secrets of
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 55 
 
 his success. It always has been a chief element of 
 power and greatness in the history of great men. 
 It is only a few things, at most, that any man can 
 see directly wdth his ow^n eyes and do with his 
 own hands. The rest he must accomplish through 
 the agency of other men. He therefore who know^s 
 how to find the right men and put them in the 
 right place — as Socrates, that profound thinker and 
 observer of human affairs, has remarked — he it is 
 that accomplishes almost without fail wdiatever he 
 undertakes. 
 
 He not only found superior men to co-operate 
 with him, but wdiat was more, what was a striking 
 proof of his own greatness, he developed them, he 
 trained them, he made them — made them not merely 
 his agents but his partners and coadjutors, and, like 
 those institutions which he founded, left them to 
 live when he was dead, to work when his work 
 was done, to continue and extend his business, to 
 widen and deepen his influence, to beautify and 
 build up Easthampton, to support and strengthen 
 Payson Church, and, in person and through those 
 whom they in like manner shall raise up, to foster 
 and found colleges, seminaries, missions and char- 
 itable institutions in this vicinity, in this and in 
 other lands, that shall not only last but live and
 
 56 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 do o'ood and bless the church and the world till 
 time shall be no more. 
 
 Besides the wise and good men whom he 
 thus trained and educated, he had two silent part- 
 ners that were worth more to him and to his 
 business than they all. The best partners any man 
 can have — and every good man may have them — 
 are a prudent, pious, loving wife, and a wise, kind, 
 guarding and guiding Heavenly Father. The man 
 who always takes counsel with the unerring intui- 
 tions and Christian impulses of a good wife, and with 
 the providence, word and spirit of God, will seldom, 
 if ever, go astray, and can hardly fail to be a 
 wise, prosperous, useful and happy man. And 
 such, I need not say, was the supreme felicity of 
 Samuel Williston. lie could meet the challenge 
 of the wise man in the last chapter of Proverbs 
 triumphantly, and answer his question without a 
 moment's hesitation : " Who can find a virtuous 
 woman ? for her price is far above rabies. The 
 heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so 
 that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do 
 him good and not evil all the days of her life. She 
 seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with 
 her hands. She is like tlie merchants' ships, she 
 bringeth her food from afar. Her husband is
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 57 
 
 known in the' gates, when he sitteth among the 
 elders of the land. She maketh fine linen and 
 selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the mer- 
 chants. She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and 
 in her tongue is the law of kindness. Her chil- 
 dren rise up and call her blessed ; her husband 
 also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have 
 done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." That 
 picture does not need to be labeled. 
 
 With this accurate knowledge of men, w^as as- 
 sociated a no less discriminating and correct dis- 
 cernment of things. He kept himself well informed 
 in matters of business, politics, morals and religion. 
 He observed, he read, he inquired, he reflected. 
 And when he acted, it was with such an insight 
 into the present and such a foresight of the fu- 
 ture, that he rarely made a mistake in his judg- 
 ment of markets, stocks and prices : and business 
 men who knew him w^ere not afraid to buv when 
 Mr. Williston bought, and thought it wise to sell 
 wdien Mr. Williston sold. The wisdom and success 
 with which he conducted his large business amid 
 all the conflicting currents, quicksands and breakers 
 of peace and war, of commercial changes and po- 
 litical revolutions, till he had reached the age of 
 three-score years and ten, show a capacity that
 
 68 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 could have guided the ship of state or the finances 
 of the nation, if the helm had been committed to 
 his hands. 
 
 With these high intellectual endowments, he 
 united that integrity and fidelity to all his engage- 
 ments which alone can inspire confidence, and there- 
 fore which alone can ensure lasting prosperity. 
 Almost at the beginning of his business in the great 
 cities, he had gained such a character for honesty 
 and honor, that large merchants would give him a 
 carte hlanche for their orders, and ask no questions 
 about prices, saying, '•' You know best — look at our 
 stock — see what we want, and supply the deficiency." 
 And this character he never forfeited. All who had 
 dealings with him knew that he would be faithful to 
 his engagements, and would expect them to be 
 prompt in the fulfillment of theirs. Scrupulously 
 honest and conscientious in the minutest details of 
 business himself, he acted in strict conformity with 
 the golden rule, ^vhen he required the same minute 
 exactness of others in business transactions. Thus 
 he inculcated honesty, while, at the same time, he 
 inspired confidence, in all around him. 
 
 But he was more than conscientious. He aimed to 
 be Christian in the management of his business. 
 From the time already mentioned when he renewed
 
 COMMEMOKATIVE DISCOURSE. 69 
 
 his consecration to the service of God, he regarded 
 his time and talents and property and business, as no 
 longer his own. The business was the Lord's, and 
 he was merely the agent. The Lord was the owner 
 of the property, and he was only a trustee, an over- 
 seer, a steward intrusted with the care and manage- 
 ment of it. Of course, he felt bound to conduct the 
 business in accordance with the will of the owner, 
 to pay over the income at his order, and to hold 
 the principal subject to his disposal. This, therefore, 
 he made the matter of his daily, and almost hourly 
 study, meditation and prayer. No other subject 
 occasioned him so much thought and anxiety. Be- 
 sides his regular hours of prayer, morning and even- 
 ing, he had his special seasons of prayer and self- 
 examination every week ; he asked wisdom from on 
 high in ejaculatory petitions many times a day, and 
 took counsel with God and with wise and good men 
 at every suitable opportunity, and all with reference 
 to this more than any, and perhaps all other ques- 
 tions: How shall I best serve God in the use of 
 the property, and in the conduct of the business 
 with which he has intrusted me. And when we have 
 taken into account all the other elements that en- 
 tered directly and obviously into the result, I cannot 
 doubt that we must reckon in the special blessing of
 
 60 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 Heaven on this method of conducting his business 
 as the grand secret of his prosperity. Such, at any 
 rate, was the hght in which he was ahvays in the 
 habit of looking at the subject. 
 
 Mr. WilHston was not naturally more generous 
 than other men. It was the regenerating, and sanc- 
 tifying grace of God, that made him such a liberal 
 giver. When, in their poverty, his parents persisted 
 in giving for charitable objects, Samuel, who was 
 toiling on the farm for the supj^ort of the family, 
 and who was not then a converted man, sometimes 
 doubted if it were not an excess of charity. More 
 than once I have heard him sa}^ that he thought 
 it hard when his father subscribed a few dollars to 
 aid the college to which he has, himself, given 
 hundreds of thousands. He had a natural love of 
 money, and the value which he attached to it was 
 enhanced by the want of it which he experienced 
 in early life, and still further strengthened by the 
 very nature and processes of the business in which 
 tlic foundations of his fortune were laid. When 
 he began to accumulate rapidly, ambition, of which 
 he was by no means destitute, would most naturally 
 have conspired with the desire of accumulation and 
 impelled him in a Ijold career of enlarging his 
 business, investing his gains, and thus amassing an
 
 COMMEMOEATIVE DISCOUESE. 61 
 
 immense property. From his own testimony, as 
 well as from the nature of the case and the judg- 
 ment of others, I am led to believe that it cost 
 him a struggle with his natural inchnations, and 
 his early habits — more of a struggle than it does 
 many men — to distribute his income for charitable 
 objects, instead of investing it for larger, and more 
 rapid accumulation. It Avas not for his own pleas- 
 ure or reputation — such was his testimony on the 
 subject — it was not for his own present gratification 
 or future fame that he gave away his thousands, 
 and hundreds of thousands. But, if he knew his 
 own heart, it was from Christian principle ; it 
 was from a sense of duty to God and mankind. 
 The love of Christ constrained him, and no other 
 power could have impelled him to such labors, 
 self-denials and sacrifices. 
 
 Benevolence was not so much a passion as a 
 principle with Mr. WillistoUj and he conducted his 
 charities with just as much method and s^^stem as 
 he did his business. '' Method is the very hinge 
 of business," was the placard which was ever be- 
 fore the eyes of the workmen in his button mill. 
 The same motto governed his whole religious life. 
 He planned his giving on the same magnificent 
 scale, and with the same thoughtful forecast as he
 
 62 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 did his manufacturing; adhered to his beneficent 
 phms, promises and engagements, with the same 
 fixed purpose ; disbursed charities as regularly and 
 systematically as he paid debts or wages ; met 
 calls for extraordinary donations, as promptly and 
 liberally, as hopefully and courageously as he did 
 unforeseen exigencies in his business, and was 
 as ready to borrow money, if need be, for the one 
 purpose as for the other. Indeed, his pledges 
 were almost always in advance of his receipts. 
 He pledged the money for Williston Seminary, 
 and for each of his $50,000 donations to Amherst 
 College, before he had made it, and he often did 
 the same to meet an emergency of the American 
 Board and of Home Missions. He would no more 
 have lost a great opportunity of doing good for 
 want of money, actually in hand, than he would 
 for that reason, have let slip a rare chance of mak- 
 ing a pecuniary investment. In short, nothing 
 shows more clearly the consistency and true great- 
 ness of his character, than the fact that he was so 
 manifestly one and the same man, acting on the 
 same principles, and by the same methods, whether 
 in his business or his religion. He made a re- 
 ligion of his business, and he made a business of 
 his religion. They were only different departments
 
 COMMEMOEATIVE DISCOURSE. 63 
 
 of the same great life-work wherein the business 
 methodized, informed and vitalized the religion, 
 while the religion, in turn, elevated, hallowed and 
 transfigured the business. In this, as in many 
 other thinojs, he showed himself a o-enuine son of 
 the Puritans, though with better manners and in 
 a happier age. In this he was like Paul and 
 John ; nay, in this he was like Christ. 
 
 The aggregate of Mr. Williston's charities, in 
 his life-time, must have exceeded a million of dol- 
 lars. His will provides for the distribution of 
 from one-half to three-quarters of a million more. 
 Considerably more than half of this magnificent 
 sum he gave to two institutions. So far from 
 regretting that he had done so, his only regret 
 as he drew near to the time when he must give 
 an account of his stewardship, was, that he could 
 not do more — that he could not endow the col- 
 lege as richly as he did the seminary, and furnish 
 it as amply for its great and good work. This 
 regret — I state it on the very best authority — 
 this regret weighed on his heart, wore upon his 
 health, and helped to shorten his life. The sor- 
 est trial of his later years was, not the loss of 
 property, not the mortification of com]3arative 
 failure in his last business enterprise, but that he
 
 64 COMMEMOEATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 was thereby prevented from providing his beloved 
 Amherst with the pecuniary means of realizing 
 his exalted idea of a Christian college. 
 
 Providence had obviously raised him up and 
 marked him out to be a founder of educational 
 institutions His own experience, both positive 
 and negative, his high appreciation of what edu- 
 cation he had, and his passionate desire, his long 
 hunger and intense thirst for more, impressed 
 him deeply with the value of the higher educa- 
 tion given in academies and colleges. His expe- 
 rience as a charity student at Phillips Academy 
 showed him the necessity of funds and endow- 
 ments to such institutions. His subsequent pros- 
 perity gave him the means of providing such 
 funds. His religious character and experience 
 emphasized to him the unspeakable worth of Chris- 
 tian seminaries of learning;. His views and feel- 
 ings and motives in this regard were precisely 
 such as inspired the original founders of Amherst 
 College. He wished to found and foster institu- 
 tions for the glory of God, and the salvation of 
 men ; for the propagation of truth and righteous- 
 ness in the earth. He saw that there was room 
 for another and better Phillips Academy, in the 
 valley of the Connecticut. He felt that there
 
 COMMEMORATIYE DISCOURSE. 66 
 
 was an imperative demand for another college as 
 richly endowed as Harvard, but more evangelical, 
 more Christian, in old Massachusetts. And he 
 believed that there could be no better location 
 for such institutions, than old Hampshire, his 
 native county, wdiich, as statistics show^ed, already 
 surpassed all other counties in its percentage of 
 educated men and of church members. He be- 
 lieved in endowing institutions of learning and re- 
 ligion. He had good reason for this; therein as 
 we have seen, he placed himself among the wisest, 
 greatest, and most far-seeing of mankind. And 
 whatever Mr. Williston did, he believed in doing 
 it well. He always made, and provided for, the 
 best things of their kind — the best houses, the 
 best mills, the best machinery, the best fabrics, 
 the best church edifices, the best colleges and sem- 
 inaries of learning ; believing this to be at once 
 the truest economy and the wisest policy. Like 
 the historians and artists of ancient Greece, he 
 wished his work to endure and be " a possession 
 forever ;" and it is only the best structures, those 
 which cost time and money, that endure. 
 
 Besides these two great and permanent institu- 
 tions, however, he was a constant and liberal 
 giver to a great variety of literary, charitable and 
 
 9
 
 66 COMMEMOIIATIVE DISCOUESE. 
 
 religious objects. He contributed liberally, very lib- 
 erally to the support of the gospel at home. He 
 was an unfailing contributor to the regular period- 
 ical charities of the church of which he was a 
 member. His donations to the great national so- 
 cieties, especially for the freedmen and home and 
 foreign missions, were as constant as the seasons, 
 and as generous as his resources w^ere large. He 
 sowed beside all waters, at the same time that 
 he planted trees, and laid foundations for many 
 generations. 
 
 Those who are skilled in such calculations can 
 easily calculate what this million of dollars which 
 Mr. Williston distributed in his life-time, would have 
 amounted to at the time of his death, if it had all 
 been invested as fast as it accrued at compound 
 interest ; and we all know it would have been a 
 vast sum ; it would have made one of the richest 
 men of this age of millionaires. And how easy it 
 would have been for him when he had made, we 
 will say, his first fifty or hundred thousand dollars, 
 instead of expending so much of it for charitable 
 purposes, or even laying it out in the extension of 
 his business, to have invested it all, as fast as it 
 came in, in docks and bonds and rtiortgages. But 
 where would Easthampton then have been ; where
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 67 
 
 then would have been Williston Seminary ; what 
 then would have become of Amherst College ; and 
 where would our Missionary Boards and Sanitary 
 and Christian Commissions have looked for help in 
 their exigencies ? It would have been a luxury 
 for a selfish miser — it would have been a natural 
 and an intellectual pleasure for Mr. Williston to 
 have sat still and seen his property roll up, tens of 
 thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, per- 
 chance tens of millions, into a more than princely 
 fortune. But how much purer and sweeter the 
 pleasure of seeing his native town prosper, and the 
 Seminary that bears his name grow, and the College 
 that he saved extending its influence — how much 
 greater the luxury of employing and supporting 
 hundreds of families and thousands of hands in his 
 business, and enlightening the eyes, gladdening the 
 hearts, saving the souls of a multitude that no man 
 can number, in this and in other lands, by the 
 fruits of his beneficence ! Mr. Williston had the 
 wisdom to make this better choice, and the satis- 
 faction of seeing in part its happy results; and I 
 bless God that we whom he has associated with 
 himself in some of his counsels and trusts, have 
 been permitted to rejoice with him in this supreme 
 satisfaction.
 
 68 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOUESE. 
 
 Mr. Williston had an ear for music j he enjoyed 
 highly and intelligently appreciated, as we all know, 
 the performances of the choice bands which he was 
 at so much jDains and expense to procure for the 
 Anniversaries of Williston Seminary. But he once 
 said to me that " the hum of the factory was sweeter 
 music than the best concert he ever heard." There 
 was a o-enuine horn hudness man. But that was 
 not the whole sigrnificance of the remark. In order 
 to understand all the sweetness of that music, the 
 end which he sought in his business must be taken 
 into consideration, as well as the means to that 
 end. There is no happiness for man on earth like 
 that of a great and good work prosecuted diligently, 
 enthusiastically, for a great and good end. That was 
 the music wdiich filled the ear and inspired the soul 
 of Mr. Williston. I pity the man who hath none 
 of this music in him. He is fit for treason, strata- 
 gems and spoils. 
 
 Mr. Williston was not a mere accumulator of 
 money. He was a creator of values. He was an 
 inventor of new fabrics, and new ways and means 
 for their manufacture. He w^as an originator of 
 new enterprises. He was the first and for some 
 time the ouly manufacturer of covered buttons in 
 the country. The manufacture of elastic suspenders
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 69 
 
 was also a new industry. Most of the other manu- 
 factures which he and his partners introduced into 
 Easthampton were comparatively new enterprises. 
 He kept in advance of the line of march in trade 
 and manufactures, and by the time the rest of the 
 line came up so as to share the business and divide 
 the profits, he was ready, if necessary, to enter 
 upon some new and more remunerative business. 
 At the same time, so far-seeing and so conservative 
 have been his plans, that the first button company 
 of the country is now the largest covered-button 
 concern in the world ; and most of the other com- 
 panies still take the lead in their several lines of 
 business. Williston Seminary, founded to be a clas- 
 sical school of the hiu;hest order and to become an 
 English college, was a new idea; or, rather, it was 
 at once novel and conservative — it was, like the 
 works of God and all the greatest and best works 
 of men, a development and at the same time a crea- 
 tion. And the way in which he provided in his 
 will for its continued growth and progress for at 
 least a generation or two to come, was as unique as 
 the institution itself, and as sagacious as it was 
 original and peculiar. 
 
 An almost uninterrupted tide of prosperity bore 
 Mr. Williston along from year to year, and from
 
 70 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 one new and successful enterprise to another, for 
 more than thirty years, until in 1866, when he 
 was already more than three-score years and ten, 
 he entered upon by far the largest and most ad- 
 venturous of all his undertakings; the building 
 of the last Williston mill and the manuflicture of 
 cotton sewing thread. This proved a failure, 
 cost him the direct loss of half a million of 
 money, and indirectl}^ no one can calculate how 
 much more, oppressed his declining years with 
 disappointment and anxiety, brought on a tortur- 
 ing, chronic, incurable disease, and shortened his 
 days by perhaps a decade of years that should 
 have been the most fruitful and happy years of 
 his life. His own judgment in review of this 
 period of life is contained in the last letter 
 which I ever received from him, in which he says, 
 " My experience leads me to think that a man 
 of seventy years should draw his business into a 
 smaller compass rather than enlarge it." It is 
 understood that he did not follow the advice of 
 one of his silent partners in this move. Whether 
 he misunderstood the counsel of the other, or 
 whether a kind and wise Providence intended to 
 teach him lessons in the school of adversity that 
 he could never have learned in prosperity, and
 
 COMMEMOKATIVE DISCOURSE. 71 
 
 to bestow on him inward and spiritual blessings 
 of far more value than money, is a question 
 which can be answered only in the light of an- 
 other world. It is not strange, however, that he 
 took that unfortunate step. His prosperity was at 
 the spring-tide. The successes and gains of the 
 war were enormous. He was flush Avith health, 
 strength, courage, hope, self-reliance and trust in 
 God. Ambition and benevolence both seemed to 
 bid him go forward. That music which so charmed 
 and inspired him at once as a business man and 
 a Christian, filled his ears and impelled him on- 
 w^ard. So far as success in business was con- 
 cerned, it was now destined to prove the song of 
 the sirens. But it had been the song of the seraphs 
 in all his p)i'evious life, and how was he to dis- 
 tinguish ? But, perhaps, this sore trial was need- 
 ful for his spiritual good. Doubtless, on the whole, 
 it was wisely ordered, and sanctified and over- 
 ruled to work in him the peaceable fruits of 
 righteousness. Certainly he developed under its 
 influence in his latter days some of the sweetest, 
 loveliest, richest fruits of his broad, deep and man- 
 ifold character. 
 
 He has been accused, perhaps I should say sus- 
 pected, of being ambitious and of giving, not so
 
 /Z COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 much for the sake of alleviatino; son'ow and doino; 
 good, as of gaining a name. But what great and 
 good man is not ambitious ? If it is a weakness, 
 it is the last infirmity of noble minds. When 
 wisely guided and properly controlled, it is the 
 strongest and grandest impulse to great achieve- 
 ments. A sanctified ambition is one of the holi- 
 est motives to good' works. And who does not 
 aspire to a good name ? Has not inspiration pro- 
 nounced it to be better than precious ointment ? 
 In due subordination to other and higher princi- 
 ples, the desire to perpetuate one's name is a 
 proper motive for a man and a Christian. And 
 if ever a man fully resolved and strove earnestly 
 to keep this motive in complete subordination to 
 the glory of God and the good of mankind, that 
 man — if I knew him, and if he knew himself — 
 that man was Mr. Williston. When a great ob- 
 ject was to be accomplished, he was as willing to 
 give large sums of money without his name as 
 with it. Witness his munificent donation to Walker 
 Hall in Amherst, which was to bear the name of 
 another donor, and his repeated efforts to obtain 
 still larger donations both from Dr. Walker and 
 Mr. Hitchcock, whom a selfish ambition would 
 rather have discouraged and set aside as rivals, as
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 73 
 
 competitors for the highest place among the friends 
 and patrons of the institution. It was not merely 
 to perpetuate his own memory that he gave his 
 name to the seminary, and the foundations which 
 he established. It was essential to the prosperity 
 and usefulness of Williston Seminary that it should 
 be called, not like high schools and small academies, 
 by the name of the place, but like other larger and 
 better endowed institutions, by the name of the 
 founder ; and for this reason, he was urged by his 
 wisest and best counselors, to give it his name. It 
 was for the interest of Amherst College that his 
 foundations and his college edifice, should be called 
 by his name, as an advertisement to the public, 
 that it was at least, partially endowed, and also as 
 an example and an inducement to others to do 
 likewise. And if the Trustees should vote to call 
 the institution " Williston College, or the University 
 at Amherst," as he forbade them to do w^hile he 
 lived, but as in gratitude and honor they are bound 
 to do, now that he is dead, and as every officer and 
 every student who was connected with it, when he 
 made the donation that saved it, would hold up both 
 hands to have them do, it would not redound more 
 to the honor of the donor, than it would conduce 
 to the reputation and prosperity of the in.stitution. 
 
 10
 
 74 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 He has been charged with driving sharp bargains, 
 getting a great deal of work out of his men, and 
 too rigidly exacting every cent of his dues. It is 
 a charge wliich is often made against those who 
 have grown rich by close calculations, careful 
 watching of the markets and nice balancing of 
 wages and prices, especially in the manufacture 
 and sale of small articles at an almost infinites- 
 imally small profit on each article. Sometimes it 
 is made honestly and candidly, but frequently, I 
 suspect, in sheer envy and jealousy; and generally, 
 I think, it is made ignorantly, without any real 
 consideration of the facts or the principles in- 
 volved. The same charge was made against Sam- 
 uel Jiudgett, the Christian merchant and philan- 
 thropist of Kingswood, near Bristol, England, who 
 began his career of money-making and money- 
 saving in his boyhood, when he j^icked up a horse- 
 shoe, went three miles with it and got a penny 
 for it, and continued it till he gave away f 10,000 
 a year for philanthropic objects. And the charge 
 was answered at length, and I think conclusively, 
 by Mr. Bayne in his " Christian Life." The chief 
 points of his answer are briefly these : To buy 
 cheaj) and sell dear is the law of trade and the 
 only way fortunes are made. In this process he
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOUESE. 75 
 
 who has the capital and the faculty will inevitably 
 have the advantao;e over him who has not. It 
 you see the gleam of a gold vein where I saw 
 only clay, the reward is justly yours; if you know 
 the ground where corn will grow better than I, 
 your sheaves must be more numerous than mine ; 
 if you have stronger sinews and more persever- 
 ance, and choose to toil for hours in the wester- 
 ing sun after I have unyoked my team, you must 
 lay a wider field under seed than I. The pearls 
 are for him that can and will dive, the golden 
 apples for him that can and will climb. His men 
 had a profound knowledge that he was not to be 
 trifled with. The incompetent and the indolent 
 were promptly discharged. A man must perform 
 what he undertook, or he must go. " Why, sir," 
 said one who had been long in his service, "■ I do 
 believe as /le would get, ay, just twice as much 
 work out o' a man in a week as another master." 
 Business is one thing and charity is another. 
 Business must be conducted in business ways and 
 on business principles. Now, large gains by means 
 of small profits on large sales is a prime rule, is 
 almost a first principle of success in trade or man- 
 ufactures. And to demand that this shall be criven 
 up in one instance — whether it be by increase of
 
 I COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 wages, reduction of prices, relaxation of services 
 or release of debts, is virtually to demand that it 
 shall be given up in all cases ; and to give it up 
 in all cases were to knock out the very corner- 
 stone both of individual success and of public 
 prosperity. All that can be demanded under the 
 name of manufacturing or mercantile honor is, 
 not charity, but justice and fairness. And this, 
 not charity, but justice and fairness, is at once for 
 the individual weal and for the public good. It 
 is nature's own way of spurring on the indolent 
 and having her work well done ; and however in- 
 dividuals may smart or grumble, it most effectually 
 subserves the interests of the community. 
 
 He sometimes gave offence to employees by the 
 rare truthfulness and frankness with which he told 
 them what was for their good. He never feared 
 to speak out what he believed to be his own 
 rights, or their duties in the relation that existed 
 between them. He never would conceal or dis- 
 guise the truth when, in his opinion, justice to 
 himself or the welfare of others required it to be 
 spoken. Severe in judging himself, he some- 
 times became conscious that he had been too se- 
 vere in censuring others, and then he was just as 
 frank in retracting the censure as he had been in
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 77 
 
 uttering it, aiid just as ready to make honorable 
 amends to the humblest workman as he would 
 have been to a person of the most exalted station. 
 He not only condescended to men of low estate, 
 but when time permitted, and as occasion required, 
 he conversed with them in the most intimate and 
 winning wa3^ He sympathized with the j^oor, for 
 he had been poor, and he proved himself to them 
 a friend in need and so a friend indeed. For he not 
 only gave them money, which is a comparatively 
 easy thing for a man of wealth to do, but what is 
 far better, he gave them thought and care and 
 wise counsel ; he tried to put them in the way 
 of earning a livelihood for themselves ; he helped 
 them to form habits of industry, economy, tem- 
 perance and piety ; he suffered with them in their 
 sorrows and rejoiced with them in their prosperity; 
 he was always faithful and true to them, though 
 they did not always fulfill their promises to him ; 
 in short, he was a father to them, and like their 
 Father in Heaven, he was kind even to the un- 
 thankful and the evil. I have in my possession 
 the strongest written testimonies to this effect, 
 accompanied by the most touching expressions of 
 gratitude and affection from those whom he thus 
 befriended in health and in sickness, and whom
 
 78 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 he thus lifted from extreme poverty to circum- 
 stances of comparative comfort and independence. 
 
 Mr. Williston's character was not perfect, any 
 more than his judgment was infaUible. Doubtless 
 he had much to contend with. Great men, strong 
 natures always have. But who of us is perfect. He 
 that is without sin among you, let him cast the first 
 stone. And when we look at the pure, solid, mas- 
 sive orold of his noble character and his useful life, 
 the canker and rust of real faults is scarcely dis- 
 cernible ; while some of these alleged faults are 
 seen to be only the alloy which is essential to the 
 value and use of the current coin. 
 
 The history of Mr. Williston's private life was 
 quite peculiar. His domestic and social affections 
 were tender and strong. When he had already 
 come to be a prosperous and, for those times, a 
 wealthy man, a friend congratulated him on his suc- 
 cess in business. His reply was, " I would gladly 
 give up every dollar and begin life a poor man, if I 
 could only have back my children that I have lost." 
 If we may trust the testimony of their grandmother 
 Williston — a partial, perhaps, and yet a competent 
 and credible witness — they were singularly lovely 
 and beautiful children, constitutionally, if not even 
 morbidly, gentle, amiable and religious, such chil-
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 79 
 
 dren, " with less of earth in them than heaven," 
 as give us glimpses of what the children of God 
 are in their Father's house, and so, as "fire ascend- 
 ing seeks the sun," they Avere soon translated to 
 their proper sphere. Ere this, we may believe, 
 the}^ have been restored to the embrace of their 
 loving, longing father. Perhaps they were wait- 
 ing to welcome him at the heavenlj^ gates, the 
 same yet how different, still childlike and dis- 
 tinctly recognizable, yet in what loftier stature and 
 in such forms of seraphic beauty and glory as we 
 can scarcely imagine. 
 
 He loved also his adopted children, cherished 
 them in their childhood, cared for their education, 
 rejoiced in their ripening virtues and graces, and 
 felt, as well he might, all a father's complacency in 
 their character, pleasure in their prosperity, pride 
 and exultation in their honors and successes.' And 
 when at the celebration of their golden wedding, 
 their eight children (counting husbands and wives) 
 and their sixteen grandchildren were gathered about 
 them at the old homestead, it was as pretty a pic- 
 ture as is often seen in this imperfect world; nothing 
 seemed wanting to make their happiness complete. 
 
 And that husband and wife, during the fifty-two 
 years that they were spared to each other, how
 
 80 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 bad they shared each other's toils and cares, con- 
 sulted each other's interests and wishes, and known 
 each other's inmost thoughts and feelings as if they 
 were their own; how had they planned and prayed 
 and sorrowed and rejoiced together ; how had they 
 always traveled together and returned together, 
 visited or staid at home together, gone out and 
 come in and risen up and sat down together, and 
 lived and moved and had their being in and for 
 each other, always not only one flesh, but palpably 
 one mind, one heart, one spirit — almost alicays in 
 one ijlace, till they seemed, even to their neigh- 
 bors, how much more to themselves, inseparable 
 the one from the other ! She was eyes and ears 
 and feet and hands to him. He was head and 
 heart and soul and spirit to her. Each was the 
 other's life — each the other's higher, better, dearer 
 self AVho can conceive the pang, the tvreiich when 
 such a couple are separated — who imagine the 
 blessedness of a speedy, perfect and perpetual re- 
 union in heaven ! 
 
 Mr. Williston's relation to his brothers was beauti- 
 ful ; his affection for them was very tender. Samuel 
 resembled his mother; Nathan is the living image 
 of his father ; Payson was like and yet strangely 
 unlike both. And it seemed as if the spirits of
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 81 
 
 the parents hovered over the brothers whenever 
 they met, and drew them towards each other with 
 a more than fraternal love. The two brothers who 
 have deceased were as unlike each other in their 
 person, manners and character as they were in 
 their ways of doing good — the one ever sowing 
 seed for an immediate harvest, the other planting 
 trees and founding institutions for many generations. 
 It was beautiful to hear them rally each other on 
 their differences and their peculiarities, and at the 
 same time to see how manifestly they sought the 
 same end in different ways, and, although person- 
 ally unlike, they were one in spirit. Lovely and 
 pleasant in their lives, in death 'they were not 
 long divided. But, methinks, the happiness of the 
 two brothers will not be quite perfect till the third 
 has joined them in the better land. 
 
 Mr. Williston had a healthy and hearty affection 
 for his native place. I fear his fellow -townsmen 
 do not realize how much he loved it, nor fully ap- 
 preciate how much he has done for it. I suspect 
 they do not know, as well as I do, how near they 
 came to losing him. He believed he might become 
 richer, he hesitated for a time w^hether he might 
 not also be more useful, to found Williston Semin- 
 ary somewhere else, and himself go with it. After 
 11
 
 82 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 much prayerful aud anxious deliberation, he decided 
 to remain; and love for the place of his birth was 
 one, and not the smallest, of the weights that turned 
 the scale. He found Easthampton a mere hamlet, 
 with an old meetino;-house on the common and a 
 few poor farms scattered around. He left it one 
 of the richest and most beautiful towns in Hamp- 
 shire County, a great educational and manufacturing 
 center, with beautiful farm-houses, (villas they might 
 almost be called,) and several model villages clus- 
 terino" about eleo-ant churches and a model sem- 
 inary of learning. He turned its very brooks into 
 silver and its sands to gold — not, however, the gold 
 and silver of the miser, but that of the Latin 
 poet, which shines only by its use. The town 
 will be known in history as his birthplace. 
 Strangers will visit the spot where he was born, 
 the house in which he lived and died, and the grave 
 in which he was buried — he who founded Williston 
 Seminary, and saved Amherst College, and lived 
 and acquired wealth only to glorify God and do 
 good to men. And not only the seminary, but the 
 town, Avill be the monument of Samuel Wihiston. 
 Eeligion was the controlling principle of Mr. 
 Williston's life. The editor of the daily morning 
 newspaper of our valley speaks of the objects of
 
 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 83 
 
 his life as two : " The making of money and the 
 serving of God." That is not, perhaps, wide of 
 the mark. But he himself, I am sure, would have 
 preferred another way of stating it. In his own 
 consciousness his object was one, viz., the serving 
 of God by the making of money. That which 
 the London Times said of Mr, Peabody may with 
 equal truth and emphasis be said of Mr. Willis- 
 ton : " He did not become charitable because he 
 had become rich, but he became rich that he might 
 be charitable." But with the former charity was 
 an end, while with the latter even charity was 
 chiefly a means to please and honor God. Charity 
 with him was the fruit of Christian piety. Hu- 
 mility, reverence, worship and obedience were also 
 marked characteristics of his religion. He feared 
 God and kept his commandments. He was emi- 
 nently conscientious. He was anxious — literally 
 and emphatically anxious, to know and do his whole 
 duty. He was inflexibly resolved on doing right. 
 His theology was that of the Puritans and the Pil- 
 grim fathers. Like them his religion Avas cast in 
 the mould of the Old Testament. The faith, hope, 
 love and joy of the gospel were not wanting, but 
 they were less conspicuous. Yet he believed in 
 the Lord Jesus Christ with all his heart and loved
 
 84 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
 
 him supremely. He never doubted the truth of 
 Christiauity, the inspiration of the Scriptures, the 
 doctrines of evangelical religion, the divinity of 
 Christ and his power to save the chief of sinners. 
 He only doubted his own personal relations to 
 Christ and the great salvation, or as he would have 
 expressed it, his personal acceptance. Of this he 
 wanted assurance. This, however, seems to have 
 been given him, in good measure, as he drew 
 near his end. " I think I am going through safe — 
 indeed, I think I may say, I know I am." "If there 
 is anything I hate it is sin ; and I know I love the 
 Lord Jesus Christ and his cause." "I am in my 
 heavenly Father's hands, and he will do that which 
 is right and best for me." These were amono; his 
 last utterances. 
 
 He died Saturday, July 18th, and was buried Mon- 
 day, July 20tli, from his own house, which was 
 filled with the friends and distinguished strangers, 
 while the people of the town crowded the lawn, 
 at the doors and beneath the windows, mourners 
 all, to express their sympathy with the family, to 
 bemoan their own loss and to do honor to his 
 memory. 
 
 Tiie richest legacy he has left us is his charac- 
 ter and his example. Happy will it be for his
 
 COMMEMOEATIVE DISCOURSE. 85 
 
 family and friends, his neighbors and acquaint- 
 ances, if they tread in the footsteps of his faith 
 and good works. It behooves the trustees of the 
 institutions which he has founded to be faithful 
 to their trust and keep and build them up on the 
 foundations which he has laid. He loved them 
 as his children and provided for them as his heirs; 
 it is our duty and privilege to care for them as 
 wards and to cherish them as if they were our 
 own daughters. The teachers and pupils of these 
 seminaries should never forget his answer — so often 
 repeated by his lips and so w^ell illustrated in his 
 W'hole life — to the first question in religion and 
 the highest question in philosophy : What is the 
 chief end of man ? He believed w^ith all his heart 
 that his chief end and the chief end of every man 
 is "to glorify God and enjoy him forever." He 
 has taught the rich the right use of money and 
 the wisdom of being their own executors. And 
 we may all learn from him the beauty and the 
 secret of a truly noble life.
 
 .Ci 
 
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