The doctor’s reading of character and detective powers were barely short of the miraculous, and his management of refractory students became so well known that many who had been expelled from the other universities were sent to Union and graduated with credit, so that the college acquired the nickname of “Botany Bay.”  There came to him once for admission a student expelled from Yale for persistent violation of the regulations, and naturally without the letter which by general usage was required from the president of one university to another, certifying the good standing of the student.  The president of Yale wrote to the doctor to ask “if he meant to take that scoundrel into his college.”  The doctor, who had made a rapid examination of the man, replied, “Yes, and make a man of him.”  In one of my post-graduate years, when I was staying with the doctor, he told me the story of this man.  He had estimated his character at a glance correctly, and saw in him a mismanaged student.  He was admitted unconditionally, as if he had come with the best of characters, and for a time he justified the confidence reposed in him.  But the uneasy nature one day broke out, and he committed a gross violation of the rules.  The discipline of the doctor began always with a friendly conversation, and with some men ended with it, for he knew so well how to paint the consequences of expulsion that it sufficed; but on the entry of this student into his library, he saw on looking at him that he “had the devil in his eye.”  He had, in fact, said to his roommate on getting the summons to the interview, “If the doctor thinks he is going to break me in he’ll find himself mistaken.”  The doctor had a curious kind of vision which made it impossible to say which of the persons in the room he was looking at, and when, while seeming to be engaged on his book, he had looked into the eyes of the student, and saw that the light of battle was kindled in them, he waited for a little, and then, as if preoccupied, said to him in his most kindly tone, “I am very much occupied at this moment, my son; won’t you come in to-morrow evening?” The young man went back to his room already half conquered by the affectionate manner, but the important point gained in the doctor’s tactics was that the psychological moment of combat in the student had been reached and could not be kept up for a day, and when on the next evening the interview took place, his combativeness had given place to perplexity and complete demoralization.  In this state the doctor gave him a paternal lesson on the consequences to his future life of the rebellion against necessary discipline and of persistent disorderly conduct, but without any actual reproof or mention of his offense, and all in his invariably kindly tone as if it were a talk on generalities, and then dismissed him to think it over.  He had established cordial relations with the rebel, and from that day had no trouble with him, and he graduated at the head of his class.