The Kansas herald of freedom., 1855-11-17
Eli ThaYer.

Eli Thayer.
This gentleman, whose name heads this
article, and who has attracted so much at
tention in the history of Kansas that a
year ago the "Self-Defensive Associa-
tion," of Weston, Mo-, offered price
for his head ,-aprice which, very likely,
he will yet come to claim in person,-is
still young We may hope that he will
live to see many free States established,
owing their freedom to the magic of the
great system, for "The Organization Of
Emigration which has its birth With
him.
He was bornin Mendon, in Massachu-
sets, in the immediate vicinity of Rhode
Island, in the year 1929. Till he was
almost of age his training differed in
nothing from that of other country boys
in Massachusetts. II had the advantages
of the New England District School,
and no advantages beside. His father,
for a part of his boyhood,-kept a
country store; and it was here, and on
farm-which was none Of the richest
which, indeed, to Western readers,
would have seemed one Of the poorest
that ELI THAYER received all the educa-
ton for business life, which he has had
occasion to use with his remarkable ex-
ecutive ability, in various enterprises OF
the last ten years.
He was nearly twenty years of age
when he proposed to prepare himself to
enter college. At that time he had made
very little acquaintance with either the
Latin or the Greek languages. His faith
err was amazed to hear this intentiou,-
but Mr.. Thayer had then, itseems, as lit
tie disposition as he has now, to stop
short in an enterprise on which he has
begun. He put his trunk on board a
Blackstone canal boat, bound for Worce-
ster, Massachusetts,. If the reader knew
what that Blackstone canal was, (it
now exists only in history, )-he would
see that it required some faith and some
energy to get the trunk through by that
line. The story, indeed, is always told
that Mr.. Thayer himself went on foot
In little memoirof him,-generally ac-
curate,-in the London Times, ofAugust
Gath, 1854, it reads thus Tying bis
few clothes in cotton handkerchief, be
placed the bundle on canal boat, and
walked to the terminus of the canal,
where he reclaimed the bundle, and con-
tinued his walk to neighboring village,
where was situated school of prepare
ton for the University"
In some way or other he pat the trunk
through, Il for We hold to the trunk as
the correct reading, and also came
through himself. The school to which
he was bound, was known as the Manual
Labor School, and was instituted with
the hope that the pupils might work with
their hands to advantage in the intervals
of study. Eli Thayer availed himself
of such work as the day gave him.-ol
such study as the night gave him,-and.
after little more than year, attained
Latin and Greek enough to meet the re-
questions for entrance at Brown Univer-
sity. His mathematical examiner, we
are told, was obliged to take his promise
that in the first term he 9euld "make up
his mathematics, on which he attempted
no examination, and we have thought
that that gentleman must have remem-
bered the contract with satisfaction when
Mr.. Thayer graduated, the most distin-
guished mathematician in his class. He
varied his college studies with various
pFacticalexercises, ranging from the nail
ing of laths TO the keeping of District
Schools. and when he graduated in 1845,
one of the best scholars of his class, he
was, probably, better advanced than
most of them, even in this world gear.
Certainly he was, if that is true, which
we have heard somebody say, that though
he entered college with nothing in his
pocket. he passed through his course.
paid his bills and graduated, with some
two hundred dollars. He graduated In
the class of ls45. having spent SO much
time in teaching at intervals of his col
lege life, that it extended over FIVE years
instead of four.
That strong minded christian philoso-
pher, whose strong common sense has
given him the reputation of standing at
the head of American teachers, tbs ven
cradle DR.. WaylaGd, was at this time the
head of Brown University. II, as We
believe, Eli Thsyer is to be remembered