Some Particulars, rather Egotistical, but very Necessary

Summary

Oro te, quis tu es?

—Cicero to Trebatius.

I was fifteen years old when I went to New Haven to enter the Freshman class, at Yale College. In the school where I prepared, one of the masters was an Englishman, and the instruction given partly on the English model. I had been fitted for Columbia College, the standard for the Freshman class in which institution was then nearly equal to that for the Sophomore at Yale. (I never met a New Englander who knew this, or could be made to believe it, but it is perfectly true notwithstanding.) The start which I had thus obtained confirmed me in the habits of idleness to which a boy just emancipated from school is prone, when he has nothing immediately before him to excite his ambition. During the first year I did little but read novels and attend debating societies; and the comparison of my experience with that of others leads me to conclude that this is the case with most boys who enter well prepared at a New England College; they go backwards rather than forwards the first year.