CREEK ROAD GANG
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Autobiography of
Nathaniel Watson Ladd
(1848-1932)
Part 6
Editor's note: This
is the sixth excerpt from the autobiographical manuscript left by
Nathaniel Watson Ladd. See the October 2009 issue for the first installment , the November 2009 issue for the second installment, December 2009 issue for the third installment , the January 2010 issue for the fourth installment of his autobiography, and the February 2010 issue for the fifth installment.
Born in 1848 in Derry, New Hampshire, the second child and first son of Daniel and Lucy Ladd, Nathaniel Watson Ladd went on to graduate from Dartmouth College and to study law at Boston University. He became a Boston lawyer and political figure, serving on the Boston Common Council, and later in the State Legislature. He was also a founder of the Boston Athletic Association. He died in 1932.
In this passage, Ladd talks of his brothers' and his own educational experiences in preparing for and attending Dartmouth. Ladd also talks of his first job upon leaving Dartmouth.
I was very anxious that both my brothers should obtain an education and get on in the world. While fitting for college, I succeeded in finding a place in Boston, in a hardware store, for my Brother John, and wrote him all about it, but he thought he did not want to leave the place on the farm where he was in Canterbury. I was so annoyed by his decision that I made a special trip to Canterbury to try and get him to take the place. I found the people with whom he was living did not want him to leave, and were disposed to help him what they could to get an education. They did, and he succeeded in fitting for College at the Tilton Seminary. And when Brother Frank left the store, he started to fit where I did, at Pinkerton Academy, but as he and brother John were very much to each other, he finally went to Tilton Seminary and finished his fit there.
Both my brothers passed through college creditably, but did not take high rank as scholars. I fear they were attracted more than I was by the outside routine of college life, for I know they were sometimes in the habit, one or both of them, of playing cards until the morning hours. I never played a game of cards while I was in college, and was known as a “dig.” Marshman W. Hasen was the principal of Pinkerton Academy while I was there and left the same year to be principal of the High School in Arlington, Massachusetts. he was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon Society in college, and it was on his account that I became a member of that Greek Letter Society. It was a great help to me in extemporaneous speaking and in many other ways. I have enjoyed the association in after life. I think I held all or nearly all of the offices of our Chapter of that Society, and both my brothers became members. I gave Brother John, or rather loaned him, my Society pin, as he was the first one of my brothers to enter Dartmouth College, a member of the class of 1878.
I studied very hard in [Dartmouth] college and I think my work in the Gymnasium and the physical exercise I got there really saved my life. For the last three years of my course, I roomed about a block and a half from Dartmouth Hall, where the Chapel exercises took place. I took my meals at a Club about half way between, and usually worked preparing a lesson, the recitation of which came immediately after Chapel. When I heard the seven minute Chapel bell commence to ring, I then got my breakfast on the way, and usually got into the Chapel before the bell finished ringing.
My college education cost me about sixteen hundred dollars, and I earned all the money during the time, except about four hundred dollars which my brother Frank loaned me at the latter part. This was a large part of his savings in the place I got for him in the store in Kittery. I have often wondered how he dared let me have so large a portion of his savings, but he was of a generous disposition. I took out a thousand dollars of Life Insurance to secure him and paid the loan in the first nine months after I left college. The insurance was an ordinary yearly premium policy. After a few years of carrying this policy, I asked the Company how much they would give me for it, and they said sixty dollars, and I let them have it. If I had continued to pay the premium to the present time, it would have cost me many times as much as anyone would ever have gotten out of it.
I have never been satisfied with any of the Religions of the World. I have always felt that they were so arranged as to place a burden, and often a very heavy burden, on mankind. I have never worshipped Jesus as a man or a Jew and I regret to say that I have been hardly able to worship him as a God, but what I have worshipped and still do is the life he is said to have lived. I do not think there is any good reason that religion should be a burden upon mankind, and I am quite inclined to think we had better go back to natural religion, which is really the oldest of all religions, and, I think, best founded.
While in college, I faithfully attended Church and a Sunday-school class taught by John King Lord, who was a tutor in Latin when I entered college. He was a very bright man and belonged to the same intellectual family of Lords that produced President Lord, the predecessor of President Smith. Being a “doubting Thomas,” I was rather in the habit of starting discussions which would last through a large part of the lesson. I was very much troubled by religious questions, and wanted to find out what anybody and everybody knew about them. I was also troubled for some years after I left college, but finally came to a decision of my own, which is this: “Do right for right’s sake, and not from fear of punishment or hope of other reward than the consciousness of having done right; always depending as to what is right on an unperverted conscience.” That has been, and still is, my religion. But as to religion as the way of life here, I would substitute as its principle cornerstone the absolute substitution of intellect for instinct. All excesses of every kind should be avoided.
I liked President Smith very much. It so happened that during my Junior year, I wrote an essay and took a prize. Members of my Greek Letter Society took considerable pride in it. The next year, Samuel L. Powers, who was a brother [in the society] completed his essay and brought it to my room and read it to me. I said, “Sam, I think that will take the first prize,” and it did.
Brother John entered [Dartmouth] college the year that I graduated in 1873.
Born in 1848 in Derry, New Hampshire, the second child and first son of Daniel and Lucy Ladd, Nathaniel Watson Ladd went on to graduate from Dartmouth College and to study law at Boston University. He became a Boston lawyer and political figure, serving on the Boston Common Council, and later in the State Legislature. He was also a founder of the Boston Athletic Association. He died in 1932.
In this passage, Ladd talks of his brothers' and his own educational experiences in preparing for and attending Dartmouth. Ladd also talks of his first job upon leaving Dartmouth.
I was very anxious that both my brothers should obtain an education and get on in the world. While fitting for college, I succeeded in finding a place in Boston, in a hardware store, for my Brother John, and wrote him all about it, but he thought he did not want to leave the place on the farm where he was in Canterbury. I was so annoyed by his decision that I made a special trip to Canterbury to try and get him to take the place. I found the people with whom he was living did not want him to leave, and were disposed to help him what they could to get an education. They did, and he succeeded in fitting for College at the Tilton Seminary. And when Brother Frank left the store, he started to fit where I did, at Pinkerton Academy, but as he and brother John were very much to each other, he finally went to Tilton Seminary and finished his fit there.
Both my brothers passed through college creditably, but did not take high rank as scholars. I fear they were attracted more than I was by the outside routine of college life, for I know they were sometimes in the habit, one or both of them, of playing cards until the morning hours. I never played a game of cards while I was in college, and was known as a “dig.” Marshman W. Hasen was the principal of Pinkerton Academy while I was there and left the same year to be principal of the High School in Arlington, Massachusetts. he was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon Society in college, and it was on his account that I became a member of that Greek Letter Society. It was a great help to me in extemporaneous speaking and in many other ways. I have enjoyed the association in after life. I think I held all or nearly all of the offices of our Chapter of that Society, and both my brothers became members. I gave Brother John, or rather loaned him, my Society pin, as he was the first one of my brothers to enter Dartmouth College, a member of the class of 1878.
I studied very hard in [Dartmouth] college and I think my work in the Gymnasium and the physical exercise I got there really saved my life. For the last three years of my course, I roomed about a block and a half from Dartmouth Hall, where the Chapel exercises took place. I took my meals at a Club about half way between, and usually worked preparing a lesson, the recitation of which came immediately after Chapel. When I heard the seven minute Chapel bell commence to ring, I then got my breakfast on the way, and usually got into the Chapel before the bell finished ringing.
My college education cost me about sixteen hundred dollars, and I earned all the money during the time, except about four hundred dollars which my brother Frank loaned me at the latter part. This was a large part of his savings in the place I got for him in the store in Kittery. I have often wondered how he dared let me have so large a portion of his savings, but he was of a generous disposition. I took out a thousand dollars of Life Insurance to secure him and paid the loan in the first nine months after I left college. The insurance was an ordinary yearly premium policy. After a few years of carrying this policy, I asked the Company how much they would give me for it, and they said sixty dollars, and I let them have it. If I had continued to pay the premium to the present time, it would have cost me many times as much as anyone would ever have gotten out of it.
I have never been satisfied with any of the Religions of the World. I have always felt that they were so arranged as to place a burden, and often a very heavy burden, on mankind. I have never worshipped Jesus as a man or a Jew and I regret to say that I have been hardly able to worship him as a God, but what I have worshipped and still do is the life he is said to have lived. I do not think there is any good reason that religion should be a burden upon mankind, and I am quite inclined to think we had better go back to natural religion, which is really the oldest of all religions, and, I think, best founded.
While in college, I faithfully attended Church and a Sunday-school class taught by John King Lord, who was a tutor in Latin when I entered college. He was a very bright man and belonged to the same intellectual family of Lords that produced President Lord, the predecessor of President Smith. Being a “doubting Thomas,” I was rather in the habit of starting discussions which would last through a large part of the lesson. I was very much troubled by religious questions, and wanted to find out what anybody and everybody knew about them. I was also troubled for some years after I left college, but finally came to a decision of my own, which is this: “Do right for right’s sake, and not from fear of punishment or hope of other reward than the consciousness of having done right; always depending as to what is right on an unperverted conscience.” That has been, and still is, my religion. But as to religion as the way of life here, I would substitute as its principle cornerstone the absolute substitution of intellect for instinct. All excesses of every kind should be avoided.
I liked President Smith very much. It so happened that during my Junior year, I wrote an essay and took a prize. Members of my Greek Letter Society took considerable pride in it. The next year, Samuel L. Powers, who was a brother [in the society] completed his essay and brought it to my room and read it to me. I said, “Sam, I think that will take the first prize,” and it did.
Brother John entered [Dartmouth] college the year that I graduated in 1873.
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