[155] Medical School in 1847. He was thus away from Cambridge during most of my boyhood, and my memory first depicts him vividly when he came back to give his Phi Beta Kappa poem in 1836. He was at this time a young physician of great promise, which was thought to be rather impaired by his amusing himself with poetry. So, at least, he always thought; and he cautioned in later years a younger physician, Dr. Weir Mitchell, to avoid the fault which he had admitted, advising him to be known exclusively as a physician until his reputation in that line should be made. The effect of levity conveyed by this poem — which was in the main a serious, not to say a ponderous one--was due largely to certain passages which he described as “wanting in dignity.” Especially criticised was one passage in which he gallantly enumerated the probable names of the various young ladies in the gallery, mentioning, for instance,
A hundred Marys, and that only oneThese statistics of admiration were not thought altogether suitable to an academic poem, and the claim itself with regard to the
Whose smile awaits me when my song is done.
