Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/299

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pursued his course regularly, graduating in 1832, aud receiving the Latin Saluta- tory in the Commencement exercises, thus keeping up with his class while teaching every winter and for nine ' months of his Senior year. During these years he taught in Northwood, Brent- wood, twice in Concord, and in the acad- emies in Deny and Topsfield, Mass., con- tinuing in the latter institution a year af- ter his graduation, then a year in Giluian- ton Academy, and in 1834 was offered and declined a tutorship in Dartmouth Col- lege. He began the study of law with Stephen C. Lyford, Esq., of Mere- dith Bridge, now Laconia, but abandoned it and commenced the study of divinity in Andover Theological Seminary, en- tering the Junior class in 1834. acting at the same time as assistant teacher in Phillips Andover Academy.

Thus it was that his natural fitness for the instructor's chair constantly assert- ed itself, finally prevented him from pur- suing his theological studies to their close, and opened before him a path to future usefulness and honor which na- ture and education had abundantly qual- ified him to fill.

In 1835 Mr. Sanborn was again offered and accepted a tutorship in his Alma Ma- ter, and before the close of the year he was formally installed as Professor of the Greek and Latin languages. Two years later these were separated, Professor Sanborn taking the Latin, and Professor Alpheus Crosby the Greek.

Had his own inclination been consulted or allowed to determine his course, Pro- fessor Sanborn would have chosen the chair of Natural Philosophy. His quick discernment aud retentive memory would have insured him ready proficiency in the facts and laws of physics, while his natural enthusiasm would have led him to the constant use of experiment and demonstration. He entered, however, with ardor and an ambition to excel, upon the dudes of his profession, and made himself a critical master of the language he was to teach. His duties were laborious. The classes were large, and recited in three divisions, necessitat-

��EDWLN D. SANBORN, LL. D. 291

endeavored to bring fresh enthusiasm to each recitation and caused the dull page to glow with luminous exposition of the dark phrases and obscure idioms of the dead language. This chair of the Latin language and literature he continued to occupy with conspicuous ability from 1837 to 1859, during which time he pre- pared and read in all about twenty lec- tures on the subject.

In 1859 Professor Sanborn was appoint- ed University Professor of Latin and Classical Literature in Washington Uni- versity, St. Louis, Missouri, of which the late Professor Joseph Gibson Hoyt of Exeter was then Chancellor, and entered upon his duties in September of that year, acting also as principal of Mary Institute, a female seminary under the government of the same college. In his new position he acquitted himself with honor, bringing to the instruction of youth in that then growing and enter- prising State the ripe aud garnered fruits of his long and rich experience in the East. But the war of the rebellion prov- ing disastrous to all the interests of Mis- souri, educational, social and financial, he was constrained to resign his chair in March, 1863, and immediately accepted the Professorship of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in Dartmouth College, returning to the seat of his former labors, but to enter upon a new field of endeavor, more congenial to his tastes and desires,

To his new position Professor Sanborn brought the experience of age and the ardor of youth. For the first time was opened to him a proper arena for the dis- play of his rich and extensive stores of knowledge, accumulated through years of wide and general research in history and general literature. He immediately entered upon the true method of univer- sity education, and the one most fruitful of results, of imparting instruction by lectures ; not the dry and elaborate prep- aration of the study, drawn out and en- grossed by rule and read to " scraping" classes, but the impromptu deliverance of a mind thoroughly saturated with the subject and alive-to the opportunity. In this professorship he is still in service.

��ting a constant crossing and recrossing He stimulates and enlists the enthusiasm of the same ground. Nevertheless, he of his pupils by inviting and assigning

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