When I was called up to receive my honorary title, the young voices were true to the promise of the young faces.  There was a great noise, not hostile nor unpleasant in its character, in answer to which I could hardly help smiling my acknowledgments.  In presenting me for my degree the Public Orator made a Latin speech, from which I venture to give a short extract, which I would not do for the world if it were not disguised by being hidden in the mask of a dead language.  But there will be here and there a Latin scholar who will be pleased with the way in which the speaker turned a compliment to the candidate before him, with a reference to one of his poems and to some of his prose works.

"Juvat nuper audivisse eum cujus carmen prope primum ‘Folium ultimum’ nominatum est, folia adhuc plura e scriniis suis esse prolaturum.  Novimus quanta lepore descripserit colloquia illa antemeridiana, symposia illa sobria et severa, sed eadem festiva et faceta, in quibus totiens mutata persona, modo poeta, modo professor, modo princeps et arbiter, loquendi, inter convivas suos regnat."

I had no sooner got through listening to the speech and receiving my formal sentence as Doctor of Letters than the young voices broke out in fresh clamor.  There were cries of “A speech! a speech!” mingled with the title of a favorite poem by John Howard Payne, having a certain amount of coincidence with the sound of my name.  The play upon the word was not absolutely a novelty to my ear, but it was good-natured, and I smiled again, and perhaps made a faint inclination, as much as to say, “I hear you, young gentlemen, but I do not forget that I am standing on my dignity, especially now since a new degree has added a moral cubit to my stature.”  Still the cries went on, and at last I saw nothing else to do than to edge back among the silk gowns, and so lose myself and be lost to the clamorous crowd in the mass of dignitaries.  It was not indifference to the warmth of my welcome, but a feeling that I had no claim to address the audience because some of its younger members were too demonstrative.  I have not forgotten my very cordial reception, which made me feel almost as much at home in the old Cambridge as in the new, where I was born and took my degrees, academic, professional, and honorary.

The university town left a very deep impression upon my mind, in which a few grand objects predominate over the rest, all being of a delightful character.  I was fortunate enough to see the gathering of the boats, which was the last scene in their annual procession.  The show was altogether lovely.  The pretty river, about as wide as the Housatonic, I should judge, as that slender stream winds through “Canoe Meadow,” my old Pittsfield residence, the gaily dressed people who crowded the banks, the flower-crowned boats, with the gallant young oarsmen who handled them so skilfully, made a picture not often equalled.  The walks, the bridges, the quadrangles, the historic college