looking into our rooms to see that we were not playing truant. Before supper, we all attended evening prayers in the chapel." The presidency of the college was then occupied by Dr. Timothy Dwight, who also gave instruction in _belles-lettres_, oratory, and theology. To him Jay wrote in 1818: "I retain a grateful recollection of your kind attention to me, and I have, and trust will ever have, reason to acknowledge the goodness of Providence in placing me under your care, when many of my opinions were to be formed and my principles established." Still later, he wrote to a college friend: "Your remarks on Dr. Dwight are grateful to my heart. I cherish his memory as one of the best friends I ever had." In his senior year Jay took part in debates among the students, presided over by Dr. Dwight. Some of the subjects discussed were: "Ought infidels to be excluded from office?" "Ought religion to be supported by law?" "Would a division of the Union be politic?" "Would it be politic to encourage manufactures in the United States?" On the last question Dr. Dwight remarked: "We shall always buy things where we can get them the cheapest; we will never make our commodities so long as we can buy them better and cheaper elsewhere." Jay displayed his natural inclination for the law by contributing a series of articles on legal subjects, over the signature of "Coke," to the _Literary Cabinet_, the students' paper. He took his degree in September, 1807, having injured his eyesight in his efforts to attain a high standing in his class. "During the winter of my junior year," he wrote in warning to his grandson William, "I was struggling hard for honours, and trying to make up for lost time; I used to rise about four o'clock, light my fire, and sit down to the study of conic sections. I brought on a weakness in my eyes which lasted several years. Be sure you never rise before the sun and study your Latin and Greek by candle-light or gas-light." After graduation Jay went to Albany and began the study of the law in the office of John B. Henry. On the 3d of September, 1812, he married Augusta, daughter of John McVickar, a merchant of New York, and vestryman of Trinity Church. The difficulty with his eyesight, which had seriously interfered with his legal studies, became so pronounced as to compel him to abandon his profession for some years. During this period he retired with his wife to his father's country seat, "Bedford," in Westchester County, and there devoted himself with energy to agricultural pursuits. The farm included about eight hundred acres, part of a tract purchased by Jacobus van Cortlandt from Katonah Sagamore and other Indian chieftains in 1700, and confirmed by patent of Queen Anne in 1704. It had come to Chief-Justice Jay partly through his mother, Mary van Cortlandt, the wife of Peter Jay, and partly through her sister, Eve van Cortlandt, the wife of Judge John Chambers. [Illustration: The Jay House at Bedford.]