My father held fast to the sharp-cornered saint and prophet, though somewhat excoriated in the association.  He held fast to his trusteeship of Antioch; and in 1866, Horace Mann having some years before been laid in his untimely grave, he stood in his place as president of the college.  Through the agency of my dear friends of those years, Dr. Henry W. Bellows and Dr. Edward Everett Hale, I was to go with him as, so to speak, his under-study, discharging the work of English professor and sometimes the duties of preacher.  I went gladly.  The spirit of the dead leader haunted pervasively the shades where he had laboured and died.  The tradition of Horace Mann was paramount among the students, the graduates, and the whole environment.  I had felt as a boy the spell of his voice and presence and knew no hero whom I could follow more cordially.  It was a joy to become domiciled in the house which had been built for him and where he had breathed his last, and to labour day by day along the noble lines which he had laid down.  This was my post for six years, one of which, however, was spent in Europe, in the hope of gaining an added fitness for my place.

I have no mind to set down here a record of those Antioch years.  One experiment we tried in a field then very novel and looked upon askance.  To-day in our schools and universities the pageant and the drama play a large part.  Forty years ago they were unknown or in hiding, and it may be claimed that our little fresh-water college bore a part in initiating a development that has become memorable and widely salutary.  In 1872 I wrote out the story of our attempt for Mr. Howells, in the Atlantic Monthly, a film which may appropriately be staged among my pictures.

The New Wrinkle at Sweetbrier; or, The Drama in Colleges

I have been distressed, dear Fastidiosus, by your remonstrance concerning the performance at our college at Sweetbrier of a “stage play.”  You have heard the facts rightly; that it was given under the superintendence of the English professor, the evening before Commencement, “with many of the accessories of a theatre.”  You urge that it is unprecedented to have at a dignified institution, which aims at a high standard, under the superintendence of a professor, such a performance; that it excites the prejudices of some people against us; and you quote the sharp remarks of David’s Harp, the organ of the Dunkers.  You urge that such things can be nothing more than the play of boys and girls, and are something worse than mere waste of time, for they set young people to thinking of the theatre, which is irretrievably sunk and only harmful.  In your character of trustee, you are sorry it has been done, and beg that it may not be done again.