Almost three-quarters of a century ago, a boy was born in the family of a New England farmer. It was in the then territory of Maine, and near the little city of Augusta. The family were plain, poor people, and the child grew up, as many other farmers’ children grew up, accustomed to plain living and such work as children could properly be set to do. In the winter he went to school, as well as at other times when the farm work was not pressing. It would be very interesting to know, if we _could_ know, whether there was anything peculiar in the early disposition and habits of this boy, or whether he grew up with nothing to distinguish him from his playmates. If we could only know what children would grow up to be distinguished men, we should, I think, be very careful to observe and record any little traits and peculiarities of their early childhood. The boy of whom I am speaking, and whom you know to be William Henry Allen, seems to have been prepared at the academy for college, which he entered at the advanced age of twenty-one years. Four years after, he was graduated, and at once he set out to teach the classics in a little town in the interior of the State of New York. While engaged in that seminary, he was called to a professorship in Dickinson College, at Carlisle, in our own State of Pennsylvania. In Dickinson College he held successively the chairs of chemistry and the natural sciences, and that of English literature, until his resignation, in 1850, to accept the presidency of Girard College. From this time until his death, except during an interval of five years, his life was spent here. For twenty-seven years he gave himself to the work of organizing and directing the internal affairs of this college, with an interest and efficiency which, until within the last year, never flagged. It is not possible at this day for any of us to appreciate the difficulties he had to encounter in the early days of the college, but we do know that he did the work well. See how he was prepared for the work he did. He was a lover of study. When only eight years old he had learned the English grammar so well that his teacher said he could not teach him anything further in that study. There was an old family Bible that was very highly prized by all the family, and his father told him that if he would read that Bible through by the time he was ten years old, it should be his property. The boy did so, and claimed and received his reward. That book is now in the possession of his daughter (Mrs. Sheldon). This early reading of the Bible will, perhaps, account for President Allen’s unusual familiarity with the Scriptures, as evinced in the richness of his prayers in this school chapel. The school to which he went in his early youth was three miles from his father’s house; and in all kinds of weather, through the heats of summer and the deep snows of winter, he plodded his way.