In

could be introduced into the colleges of this state.* our judgment it is in various ways calculated to be useful. It furnishes the indigent student with means, acquired by his own labor and industry, to defray the expenses of his education, and thus enables him to pursue his studies, and preserve his personal independence, and to avoid the degradation, at least in feeling, of living on the charitable donations from ladies' societies, or other benevolent institutions. It gives to the district schools competent and able teachers; and the exercise of teaching and of governing a school furnishes the teacher himself with perhaps the best means of obtaining a correct insight into the human character from its developments by children and unsophisticated youth, while it leaves the young teacher, who is himself a learner, sufficient leisure to consider and reflect upon the studies he has pursued the preceding summer and

autumn.

Some of the most eminent men in New England, among whom we may mention the elder Adams, have commenced their business life by teaching a common school while they were themselves students at college. We have no direct information respecting the success of Mr. Wright as a teacher, but from the patience, diligence, skill, and address with which, in afterlife, he pursued his various avocations, we have no doubt he discharged his duty as a schoolmaster in a manner useful to his pupils, and satisfactory to his employers; and if so, who shall say but that Silas Wright, in this humble employment, may not, during the short time he was engaged in it, have done as much real good, as when subsequently oc

The author has been recently informed that this laudable custom has been partially adopted in Union and Hamilton colleges.

cupying some of the most conspicuous and important stations in the country, he justly merited and received the plaudits of a great nation?

A worthy and much-respected clergyman,* who was in college with Mr. Wright, in a letter to the author, written since the death of Mr. W., says :

My first acquaintance with him [Wright] commenced when we were lads together. At that early period his frankness, his unbending regard to truth, and his perfectly upright and fair dealing, were not only conspicuous, but were proverbial among his associates. His natural temper was mild and attractive. In the academy, while pursuing studies preparatory to entering college, he was an industrious student, and several times was the successful competitor for the small prizes proffered to excite emulation. In college he stood fair as a scholar, and high as a young man of correct moral principles and irreproachable habits."

Mr. Wright was a member of Middlebury College during those years in which the United States were at war with Great Britain. Political disputes, during that period, were very rife in the northern and eastern states, and in no state were they more bitter than in the state of Vermont. Party feeling was probably the more ardent and excited there in consequence of the approach of a British army, during the period we have mentioned, near the western line of Vermont. Although it is to be regretted that political differences, and especially that partisan zeal and prejudices should ever be permitted to enter our literary institutions, or occupy for a moment the attention. of students at our universities, it is, nevertheless, not sur

*Rev. H. S. Johnson of Canton.

prising that at this time the minds of the ardent and spirited young men who were students at Middlebury College, should have participated in the excitement which prevailed all around them. They did indeed mingle in the contest, and attached themselves to one or the other of the two great parties, as to them respectively seemed right and proper. Mr. Wright took ground in support of the war, of Mr. Madison's administration, and the Republican party. It is by no means improbable that the contest in which he then engaged, with a formidable majority of his fellow-students, had a considerable influence in fastening on his mind a predilection for that party which he believed was the Republican party, and which, it appears, had a controlling effect upon his conduct during the remainder of his life.

Immediately after Mr. Wright was graduated at Middlebury College, and in the month of October, 1815, he came into the state of New York, and commenced the study of law in the office of the Hon. Henry C. Martindale, a gentleman who held a respectable standing as a lawyer, and who was afterwards for several successive terms elected a member of the House of Representatives in the Congress of the United States, for the district in which he resided. Mr. Wright pursued his studies in the office of Mr. Martindale, at Sandy Hill, in Washington county, about a year and a half, when he left the office of Mr. Martindale, and completed the study of his profession under the direction of Roger Skinner, afterwards elected a member of the Senate of this state, and subsequently appointed United States Judge of the Northern District of New York. Judge Skinner then, and for some time after Mr. Wright was admitted an attorney of the Supreme Court, kept an office in the village of

Sandy Hill.* We are aware that it has been stated that Mr. Wright read law with Judge Skinner in the city of Albany, but this is an error; Mr. Wright never was in Albany, except merely to pass through it, until he came there as a member of the State Senate in the year 1824. The author takes leave to remark in passing, that before Mr. Wright was known to him as a legislator or a politician, he has frequently heard Judge Skinner speak in terms of high commendation both of his head and heart. In the January term of 1819, Mr. Wright was admitted an attorney of the Supreme Court.

After, and indeed before Mr. Wright had obtained his license, his health had become so much impaired, probably in consequence of confinement in a law-office, and the laborious discharge of his duties as a clerk, together with a too severe application to his studies, that his friends became alarmed on his account, and urged him to undertake a journey on horseback through the western parts of the state of New York. He followed their advice, probably with the less reluctance, as he must then have been anxious to discover the most eligible place in which he could commence business with a reasonable prospect of success, and because he was desirous personally to see and explore the great West, of which he had heard so much. To him it was not only a journey in pursuit of health, but it was an expedition in search of a place which he might select for his future residence. On setting out upon such a journey, and for such purposes, his feelings must have been highly excited. He was desti

While Mr. Wright was reading law under the direction of Judge Skinner, in order to preserve his pecuniary independence, he again devoted several months to the business of teaching a school at Fort Miller

tute of wealth and influential connections; but "the world was all before him where to choose his place of rest, and Providence his guide." What must have been the hopes and fears which alternately agitated the noble mind of the young Vermonter, can by men who in youth have undertaken similar enterprises, better be imagined than described.

After travelling through a considerable part of western New York, Mr. Wright in returning directed his course northerly, which finally brought him into the county of St. Lawrence, the greater part of which was then an unbroken wilderness.

A few houses were at that time erected on the spot where the fine and flourishing village of Canton now stands. Thither Mr. Wright directed his steps. The courts in the county of St. Lawrence were then held at Ogdensburg, and no doubt the forecast of Wright enabled him to perceive that the seat of justice would ere long be removed to a more central part of the county. Canton was much nearer the geographical centre than Ogdensburg, and his sagacious mind must soon have arrived at the conclusion that the county-seat would probably be soon removed from the latter to the former village. It is to be presumed that some such considerations as we have suggested led him to visit Canton. When he arrived there, he was delighted to find located in that place an old and much esteemed friend of his father, Capt. Medad Moody, who several years before had removed from Weybridge in Vermont, to the county of St. Lawrence. Mr. Moody was no less pleased on seeing and welcoming to his house the son of his valued neighbor and associate of former days. Mr. Wright also found in this village others of the friends and neighbors of his father, whom he