Harvard memorial biographies ...

Henry Ware Hall.

125

"He was the brightest and quickest of his class. He learned
readily and rapidly, and retained what he learned better than most
who acquire so easily. His recitations in Latin were the best I
ever heard; and in all his recitations he had an easy, confident
way, which I recall very vividly."
From the journal of a school debating-club of which he was
a member, it appears that the favorite themes for debate had
relation to great national issues, upon which he and the rest
would so soon be called to stake their lives; while it also
appears that his name was invariably recorded as taking the
side of universal freedom and abstract right. Not that this
shows in him any truer regard for these than they had, who, for
ends of debate, took the opposite side, some of whom nobly
proved, in the final event, how dear to them was the cause of
freedom and of right. "But," says his teacher, who was president of the club, "Hall, I well remember, always, in the
debates, took the side of his convictions. He chose to do so,
and we allowed him; though, it being an exercise for intellectual training mainly, sides were taken irrespective of
convictions."
He entered Harvard College in 1856, with an unconditioned
acceptance, and took early and easily a highly respectable rank
among his classmates, - a rank which, it is due to truth to say,
he failed to keep permanently, through a temporary dominance
of indifferent and careless ways, causing thereby the only disappointment he had ever brought upon a single heart that
knew him. At the close of his Sophomore year it was thought
best by his father, -a judgment which he himself cordially
approved, - to transfer his academic relations to Antioch
College in Ohio. Offering himself, with no loss of time, for
admission to the Junior Class of that institution, he was readily
accepted; and there, emerging from the shadow, in a noble
reassertion of his better self, he honorably completed the
collegiate course, graduating with distinction, and enjoying in
eminent measure the good-will and affection of fellow-students
and officers. A professor in the institution at that time writes:
"He always interested me. He impressed me from the first