Life then was a solemn business at Hanover.  No dancing; no cards; no theatricals; a yearly concert at commencement, and typhoid fever in the fall.  On the Lord’s Day some children were not allowed to read the Youth’s Companion, or pluck a flower in the garden.  But one old working woman rebelled.  “I ain’t going to have my daughter Frances brought up in no superstitious tragedy.”  She was far in advance of her age.

I have always delighted in college songs from good voices, whether sung when sitting on the old common fence (now gone) at the “sing out” at the close of the year, or merrily trolling or tra-la-laing along the streets.  What a surprise when one glorious moonlight night which showed up the magnificent elms then arching the street before our house—­the air was full of fragrance—­I was suddenly aroused by several voices adjuring me, a lady of beauty, to awake.  I was bewildered—­ecstatic.  This singing was for me.  I listened intently and heard the words of their song: 

Sweet is the sound of lute and voice
When borne across the water.

Then two other sweets I could not quite catch, and the last lines sung with fervor: 

But sweeter still is the charming voice
Of Professor Sanborn’s daughter.

Two more stanzas and each with the refrain: 

The prettiest girl on Hanover Plain is
Professor Sanborn’s daughter.

Then the last verse: 

Hot is the sun whose golden rays
Can reach from heaven to earth,
And hot a tin pan newly scoured
Placed on the blazing hearth,
And hot a boy’s ears boxed for doing
That which he hadn’t orter,
But hotter still is the love I bear
For Professor Sanborn’s daughter.

with chorus as before.

I threw down lovely flowers and timidly thanked them.  They applauded, sang a rollicking farewell, and were gone.  If I could have removed my heart painlessly, I believe that would have gone out too.  They had gone, but the blissful memory!  I leaned on the window sill, and the moon with its bounteous mellow radiance filled my room.  But listen, hark!  Only two doors beyond, the same voices, the same melodious tones, and alas, yes, the same words, every verse and the same chorus—­same masculine fervour—­but somebody else’s daughter.

A breakfast comment:  “It’s a terrible nuisance this caterwauling in the middle of the night in front of the house!” For once I was silent.

Many distinguished men were invited to Dartmouth as orators at commencement or on special occasions, as Rufus Choate, Edward Everett, John G. Saxe, Wendell Phillips, Charles Dudley Warner, and Dr. Holmes, whom I knew in his Boston study, overlooking the water and the gulls.  By the way, he looked so young when arriving at Hanover for a few lectures to the Medical School that he was asked if he had come to join the Freshman class.

There were also Edwin P. Whipple, the essayist, and Walt Whitman, who was chosen one year for the commencement poet.  He appeared on the platform wearing a flannel shirt, square-cut neck, disclosing a hirsute covering that would have done credit to a grizzly bear; the rest of his attire all right.  Joaquin Miller was another genius and original.