The appearances are that he will be the last of his type, once so powerful and still so venerable in New England history.  He wears (for he is yet living) the dignity of a closing cycle; there is something sad and grand about his individualism, as there is about the last great chief of a tribe, or the last king of a dynasty.

In his youth he was the progressive of Evangelical theology.  In his age he stands the proud and reticent conservative, the now silent representative of a departed glory, a departed severity—­and, we must admit, of a departed strength—­from which the theology of our times has melted away.  Like other men in such positions, he has had battles to fight, and he has fought them; enemies to make, and he has made them.  How can he keep them?  He is growing old so gently and so kindly!  Ardent friends and worshipping admirers he has always had, and kept, and deserved.

A lady well known among the writers of our day, herself a professor’s daughter from a New England college town, happened once to be talking with me in a lonely hour and in a mood of confidence.

“Oh,” she cried, “it seems some of these desolate nights as if I must go home and sit watching for my father to come back from faculty meeting!”

But the tears smote her face, and she turned away.  I knew that she had been her dead father’s idol, and he hers.

To her listener what a panorama in those two words:  “Faculty meeting!”

Every professor’s daughter, every woman from a university family, can see it all.  The whole scholastic and domestic, studious and tender life comes back.  Faculty meeting!  We wait for the tired professor who had the latest difference to settle with his colleagues, or the newest breach to soothe, or the favorite move to push; how late he is!  He comes in softly, haggard and spent, closing the door so quietly that no one shall be wakened by this midnight dissipation.  The woman who loves him most anxiously—­be it wife or be it daughter—­is waiting for him.  Perhaps there is a little whispered sympathy for the trouble in the faculty which he does not tell.  Perhaps there is a little expedition to the pantry for a midnight lunch.

My first recollections of Professor Park give me his tall, gaunt, but well-proportioned figure striding up and down the gravel walks in front of the house, two hours before time for faculty meeting, in solemn conclave with my father.  The two were friends—­barring those interludes common to all faculties, when professional differences are in the foreground—­and the pacing of their united feet might have worn Andover Hill through to the central fires.  For years I cultivated an objection to Professor Park as being the chief visible reason why we had to wait for supper.

I remember his celebrated sermons quite well.  The chapel was always thronged, and—­as there were no particular fire-laws in those days on Andover Hill—­the aisles brimmed over when it was known that Professor Park or Professor Phelps was to preach.  I think I usually began with a little jealous counting of the audience, lest it should prove bigger than my father’s; but even a child could not long listen to Professor Park and not forget her small affairs, and all affairs except the eloquence of the man.