Beloit College - Codex Yearbook (Beloit, WI)

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18 All such long records of worthy genealogy bring, in a new West and in a time of self- made men, a wholesome lesson of the value of good breeding handed down in certain kinds of blue blood. Until Ioseph Emerson was nine years old his father, Rev. Ralph Emerson, was pastor of the church in picturesque and intellectual Norfolk, Conn. Declining a call to the presidency of Western Reserve College, he removed to Andover, where, for a quarter of a century, he filled the chair of Ecclesiastical History. Beloit visitors at Andover are glad to see, honored on the classic walls of the Seminary, the portrait of a father who was always an inspiration and a companion to his son. joseph Emerson's early school and college honors were always most prized as loyal offerings to the father's gratihcation. The later years of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Emerson, several of which were spent in Rockford, were characterized by a most hearty and constant interest in Beloit College, an interest only partially expressed by the considerable additions to the resources of the College which came through their influence. Their honored remains rest in the Beloit Cemetery, and their memorial is the Emerson Library Fund, given principally by their son, Mr. Ralph Emerson, of Rockford. Prof. Emerson's course of preparatory study was completed at Phillips Academy, Andover, after a year's interruption for the recuperation of health. This year, spent in Colebrook, Conn., on the farm of his Grandfather Rockwell, one of the nobility of Litch- field County, brought a serviceable education in practical arts and deepened the native poetic love for landscape, animals, fruits and flowers, to which the pastoral garden on College Street still always testifies. Mr. Emerson graduated from Yale College in 1841. Among his many distinguished classmates were Judge Learned, Rev. Dr. W. T. Eustis, judge Birdseye, and Donald G. Mitchell. After teaching for one year as Principal of Union Academy, New London, Conn. fa year which students of that Academy still rememberj, he entered Andover Seminary 7 where he pursued his theological studies for two years. Then he accepted a call to a tutorship at Yale Colle l ' l ge, wiere ie taught Latin, mathematics, and natural philosophy, continuing meantime his theological studies. For four years he held this tutorship under the administrations of Presidents Day and Woolsey. In 1848 came the call to Beloit. After two days of wet journeying from Milwaukee, President A. L. Chapin, then a pastor in Milwaukee and a Trustee of the scarcely born College, with the drenched but undamped new Professor, drove up to our Campus, where they found mounds and the walls and frame of a brick building three stories and a half

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616 THEODORE L. WRIGHT, M. A. Assistant Professor of Ancient Languages. Graduated CA. BJ from Beloit College 1880. M. A. by Harvard 188-i. M. A. by Beloit 1586. Instructor in BeloitrCol- lege Academy 1882-88. Assistant Professor of Ancient Languages in Beloit College 1888. HIRAM D. DENSMORE, M. A. Professor of Botany. Graduated CA. B.J from Beloit College June, 1886. Entered upon present duties September, 1888. M. A. by Beloit College J une 20, 1889. DVVIGHT B. XVALDO, PH. M. Instructor in History and Political Economy. Graduated fljh. BJ at Albion College 1887. Ph. M. by Albion College June, 18510. Entered upon duties at Beloit January 6, 1891. EDWARD M. BOOTH, M. A. Knapp Instructor in Elocution. V Graduated CA. B.J at Yale July, 1863. M. A. by Chicago University 1867. Entered upon duties at Beloit Novem- ber,1SS7. ' WILLIAM A. PERKINS, M. A. Instructor in Academy. HENRY B. KUMMEL, B. A. Instructor in Academy. NVILLIAM K. HAY. Instructor in Academy.

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19 high. Prof. Emerson is surprised, by good omen, to hnd that his single colleague, already arrived, is none other than his loved classmate, Prof. jackson I. Bushnell. Do you think we can have a College here? asked the newly-appointed Professor of Languages, and the newly-appointed Professor of Mathematics replied, Yes-if we make it. l' Coming out from his lirst meeting with the hardy, tender Trustees, after their frontier praying together, Prof. Emerson at once wrote to his father, in this characteristic expression of reverent responsibility: If I have any doubt whether I ani right in accepting lhe trust thus laid upon me, it is because I feel afraid to stand among so many prayers. A Dr. Emerson was married to Miss Mary C. North, Sept. 7, 1852. After her death he married, a's his second wife, Miss Helen F. Brace, Iuly 9, 1884. In 1869, Prof. Emerson went abroad, spending more than a year in travel and study in Europe, Egypt, and Palestine. The Beloit boys who catch his Hellenic enthu- siasm, and so visit Delphi, find there no oracle more suggestive than Prof. Emerson's entry on the Visitors' Book, made in those days when entries were rare and Delphi only visited by most devoted Hellenists. With the exception of this absence, Prof. Emerson has been constantly a part of the life of Beloit, of the Church, of the College, for more than forty years, until his present absence in Europe since the autumn of 1888. He is expected to be again in America in time to attend the jubilee of his class in New Haven in the early summer. From these travels, in which Mr, and Mrs. Emerson have been seeking needed rest, their return is eagerly expected at Beloit, even among students who have not known personally our Professor, for he can be no stranger while his former pupils quote warmly to the newer comers the Homeric: Zeus will one day come back again from Oceanus to his own Olympusf while he sends object-lessons among us, such as the cast of Hermes, that teaches Greek in the Greek room, while his Emersonian words are unforgetable, sounding in Beloit ears: Keep the ball rolling, or sounding his special message to 'gzz Tell them to keep the College full of soul. Even while he is present in the College halls, it is by such deep-sinking laconic utterances and godly object-lessons that Prof. Emerson exercises much of his unique influence, so that a Freshman half forgets the wonderfully exact Greek scholarship and wide Greek culture of the master while under the direct power of the man.