CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,

Author of “The Gates Ajar,” “The Madonna of the Tubs,” etc.

ANDOVER GIRLS AS STUDENTS OF THEOLOGY.—­THE DARK DAYS OF THE WAR.—­WRITING MAGAZINE STORIES AND SUNDAY-SCHOOL BOOKS.—­THE DIFFICULTY AND UNCERTAINTY OF WRITING FOR A LIVING.

One study in our curriculum at the Andover School I have omitted to mention in its place; but, of them all, it was the most characteristic, and would be most interesting to an outsider.  Where else but in Andover would a group of a dozen and a half girls be put to studying theology?  Yet this is precisely what we did.  Not that we called our short hour with Professor Park on Tuesday evenings by that long word; nor did he.  It was understood that we had Bible lessons.

But the gist of the matter was, that we were taught Professor Park’s theology.

We had our note-books, like the students in the chapel lecture-rooms, and we took docile notes of the great man’s views on the attributes of the Deity, on election and probation, on atonement and sanctification, on eschatology, and the rest.

Girls’ with pink ribbons at white throats, and girls with blue silk nets on their pretty hair, fluttered in like bees and butterflies, and settled about the long dining-room table, at whose end, with a shade over his eyes to shield them from the light, the professor sat in a dark corner.

Thence he promulgated stately doctrines to those soft and dreaming woman-creatures, who did not care a maple-leaf whether we sinned in Adam, or whether the Trinity were separate as persons or as attributes; but who drew little portraits of their dearest Academy boys on the margins of their lecture-books, and passed these to their particular intimates in surreptitious interludes between doctrines.

What must have been the professor’s private speculations on those Tuesday evenings?  I had a certain sense of their probable nature, even then; and glanced furtively into the dark corner for glimpses of the distant, sarcastic smile which I felt must be carving itself upon the lines of his strong face.  But I never caught him at it; not once.  With the gravity befitting his awful topics, and with the dignity belonging to his Chair and to his fame, the professor taught the butterflies, to the best of my knowledge and belief, as conscientiously as he did those black-coated beetles yonder, the theologues on the Seminary benches.

[Illustration:  “THE OLD BRICK ACADEMY,” PHILLIPS ACADEMY, ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS, WITH THE CLASS OF 1861 IN FRONT.

Of the class of 1861 over twenty went into the war, and several died in battle or in war prisons.  Lieutenant S.H.  Thompson, son of the late Professor William Thompson of East Windsor Seminary, was among this number.  Also, Sergeant J.H.  Thompson, son of the late Dr. Joseph P. Thompson of New York City.  President Ward of Franklin College, the Rev. Dr. Dougherty of Kansas City, and the Rev. Dr. Brand of Oberlin College, were members of the class, and their portraits appear in the picture.  The valedictorian was Carlos F. Carter, brother of President Carter of Williams College.  He was drowned in the Jordan a few months after graduation.]