To my mind the chief glory of Dr. McCosh’s presidency at Princeton was the fervid interest he felt in the religious welfare of his students.  He often invited me to come over and deliver sermons to them, and occasionally a temperance address; for he was a zealous teetotaler and prohibitionist, and I always lodged with him at his house.  As I turn over my book of correspondence I find many brief letters from him.  In the following one he refers to the remarkable revival in the college in the winter and early spring of 1870: 

     COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY, PRINCETON, Jan. 9, 1873.

     My dear Dr. Cuyler:

In the name of the Philadelphian Society, and in my own name, I request you to conduct our service on the day of prayer for colleges, being Thursday the 30th of January.  It is three years, if I calculate rightly, since you performed that duty for us.  That visit was followed by the blessed work in which you took an active part.  May it be the same this year!  The college is in an interesting state:  we have a great deal of the spirit of study; there is a meeting for prayer every night except Friday; the class prayer meetings are all well attended, in some of the classes as many as sixty present; but we need a quickening.  I do hope you will come.  Our habit is an address of half an hour or so at three PM in the college chapel, and a sermon in one of the churches, especially addressed to students, but open to all in the evening.  Of course, you will come to my house, and live with me.  Yours as ever,

     James McCosh.

To hundreds of the alumni of Princeton this letter will stir the fountain of old memories.  They will hear in it the ring of the old college bell; they will see the lines of students marching across the campus to evening prayer and into the chapel.  Upon the platform mounts the stooping form of grand old “Uncle Jimmie,” and in his broad and not unmelodious Scotch accents he pours out his big, warm heart in prayer.  With honest pride in their Alma Mater, they will thank God that they were trained for the battle of life by James McCosh.

The limits of this narrative do not allow me to tell of all my delightful “foregatherings” with that venerated Nestor of American art, Daniel Huntington; and with General James Grant Wilson with his repertoire of racy Scotch stories; and with my true yoke-fellows in the Gospel, Dr. Herrick Johnson, Dr. Marvin R. Vincent, and Dr. Samuel J. Fisher—­and with a group of infinitely witty women who regaled many an evening hour with their merry quips and conundrums.  The unwritten law which prevails in that social realm is:  “Each for all, and all for each other.”