The trustees were gathered in their room waiting for the meeting to be called to order.

Mr.Winthrop was talking about his college days.

I asked him how it happened that there were so many distinguished persons, in various departments of excellence, who were graduated from Harvard about his time, in his class and in the few classes following and preceding.

I said that sometimes there would be several orators, or eminent men of science, or eminent classical scholars, or eminent teachers, graduated about the same time, and their excellence would be attributed to some one instructor; but that in his time there seemed to be a crop of great men in all departments of life--in natural history, in the pulpit, the bar, in oratory, in literature, and in public life.

Mr.Winthrop rose to his feet from this chair and brought his hand down with great emphasis on the table as he answered: "It was the influence of Charles Emerson, Sir." Charles Emerson delivered just before his death a very beautiful and impressive lecture on Socrates.