"The round of college duties presents few marked events. Time has left no record of most of the occurrences which diversified and enlivened the period from 1797 to 1799. How the two friends studied, and read, and discussed, and recreated together, has been lost, just as the facts of our daily life will be lost sixty years hence. They made constant and good progress. They were about equally good scholars, neither of them being a dead weight upon the other. Each was happy in the other's proficiency. The amount of learning requisite for a degree was less then than now. Sciences have been introduced into the course which were then in their infancy. But it may be doubted whether the students of our day have the advantage over those of an earlier period, in respect to thoroughness as well as extent of attainment. They read fewer books, in the first years of the college, but they thought the more. They were as well disciplined and able, and as competent to handle a difficult subject, I imagine, as our students, if they were not as well informed. We know from the esteem in which Shurtleff was held by the Trustees and Faculty, as it appeared not long after his graduation, that he was one of the best scholars of his time. "Peculiar interest attaches to the religious experience of Shurtleff during his college course. "He had performed some of the duties of a Christian before he supposed himself to possess the Christian character. The first school he taught he opened daily with prayer, persevering in the practice as a conscientious duty, in spite of many misgivings and much timidity. And this he did in every school he afterward taught. He kept up the habit of secret prayer, at the same time, asking more earnestly than for anything else, that his weak eyes might be cured, and that he might have the means of intellectual improvement. "He seems to have supposed that during his senior winter vacation he became a true Christian. "Soon after his return to college, he intimated a desire to a classmate, who, as he supposed, was the only professor of religion in the class, to join with others in a private meeting for religious conference and prayer. He had never attended, or even heard of such a meeting. After a little delay he was surprised to learn from his friend that such a meeting as he had proposed had been held for years, and that he was desired to attend. On the Saturday evening following, he and five or six other persons assembled, and by the free interchange of thought and feeling, and the apparently humble prayers that were offered, he felt himself greatly refreshed and quickened. On leaving college he regretted the loss of nothing more than of these Saturday evening conference meetings.