The National cyclopædia of American biography : being the history of the United States as illustrated in the lives of the founders, builders, and defenders of the republic, and of the men and women who are doing the work and moulding the thought of the present time, edited by distinguished biographers, selected from each state, revised and approved by the most eminent historians, scholars, and statesmen of the day . committed to mem-ory. His memory was peculiarly retentive. Aclassmate says of him: By reading twenty or morepages of poetry twice over, I have heard him repeattheir contents almost
The National cyclopædia of American biography : being the history of the United States as illustrated in the lives of the founders, builders, and defenders of the republic, and of the men and women who are doing the work and moulding the thought of the present time, edited by distinguished biographers, selected from each state, revised and approved by the most eminent historians, scholars, and statesmen of the day . committed to mem-ory. His memory was peculiarly retentive. Aclassmate says of him: By reading twenty or morepages of poetry twice over, I have heard him repeattheir contents almost verbatim. His ability as awriter and debater gave rise to the opinion while hewas still in college, that he was an omnivorousreader. But he was not. He read few authors, buthe selected them with great care, and read withfixed attention. He was no literary gourmand. Hedevoted very little time to works of fiction; his tastewas for history, philosophy and general a letter to a friend, written just after his gradu-ation, he says: So much as I read I make myown. When a half hour, or an hour at most, hasexpired, I close my book and think it all over. Ifthere is anything particularly interesting to me,either in sentiment or language, I endeavor to recallit and lay it up in my memory, and commonly caneffect my object. Then if, in debate or conversationafterward, any subject came up on which I had read. 2^,^^ hcA^i^ something, I could very easily talk, so far as myknowledge extended, and then I was very careful tostop. While a student he devoted more than twelvehours a day to study, and yet the common impressionis that he was an idler in college. This coming to hisears in his mature life, he exclaimed: What foolspeople are to suppose that a man can make anythingof himself without hard study! At a later time hesaid: I do not know experimentally what wealthis, nor how the bread of idleness tastes. For atleast two of the winters that he spent in college hetaught school to e
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