The age-herald., 1898-09-06
SECRETARY HAYS
 COLLEGE DAYS

was In my college days. was u lresh-
 man at Brown university. and had stroll
 ed into my friends room. There I saw a
 boy of apparently sixteen or seventeen | lying fiat on his back on the bed with his heels higher than his head.
 ''He was telling a particularly funny
 story, which interested me immensely,
 though I must admit that I was more
 taken up with the strangers youth
 ful beauty than I was with his
 story His features were of ex-
 quisite regularity and his complexion
 was a wonderful combination of pink and
 white, and as delicate as a girls. As socn
 as l could, asked my friend who the
 stranger was, and I shall never forget the
 look of pitying condescension he cast upon
 me.
 Why. that's John Hay he said, the
 smartest fellow in the junior class I
 thought everybody in Brown knew Hay. but forgot that you were green fresh
 man and hardly in college yetr
 ''Then I was introduced, and I assure you I felt the honor quite as much as I
 should were I to be introduced to any cabi-
 net minister now. That was more than
 forty years ago-just forty-one, to be ex- act, for Hay belonged to the class of '5s.
 Though was two years behind him and belonging to another college society-he
 was a Theta Delta Chi, while I was not John Hay was my friend from that time on to the end of our school days, and has re- mained so ever since. In fact, he was a
 friend to pretty nearly every one in the
 school, though we younger fellows. were less intimate with him, of course, than his own classmates. Everybody in all the
 classes looked up to him. To tell the truth, he was a leader of the entire body of
 students, seniors and all, He was at once
 the handsomest, the wittiest, the jolliest and the most sympathetic fellow in the whole school, and his power over the seniors was quite as complete as over the freshmen.
 There were times, though, when he wasn't friendly to any one. Usually he was all smiles and good words, but occa-
 sionaly he would appear with a frown as
 black as thundercloud upon his brow.
 Then his jollity was turned to gall and
 wormwood, and whoever addressed him
 was sure to receive surly answer. On
 such occasions we all avoided him, even
 going so far sometimes as to cross to the other side of the way to save a meeting.
 
 eral affection in which he was held by his fellow students at Brown than to say that the whole institution seemed out of sorts whenever John Hay had the blues, and I am happy to say that they came at rare intervals only and quickly disappeared as a rule.
 "Not being in any of his classes Ifcan't
 speak with much detail about his tastes of ct, h,lt am sure that in general way he ex- celled in letters and rhetoric His essays
 were the admiration of the faculty and the despair of the students, before whom they
 were always held up as models for imita- | tion.
 "Hay used to like his own writings mighty well in those days. or at least we thought he did, for it was his invariable custom to learn every one of his essays by heart. I have heard him repeat more than one piece of his student writing, yer batim months after producing it, and once
 for our edification he reeled off whole es- say from memory full year after it was written. He had great memory, anyway. He could commit pages and chapters Of l history by simply reading them over once, | and it was the same way with lists of l names, tables of figures and series of dates. I don't know whether he will thank me TOT DrinS1nR tnlS to the dtteiillOil OI tiiC public or not; I do remember that he | thought lightly of his wonderful gift in this direction and frequently declared it to be a faculty of no great moment. ''In speaking of his writings as a student I ought to say that he wrote verses then | as we'll as prose, but none of his college verse was of the Jim Bludso Little | Brooches variety And I may say concern ing Little Brooches that he thought almost as little/of that famous production when it | was written as he evidently does now. He | wrote it while serving as one of President | Lincoln's secretaries without intending | that it should ever be put into type. One | day, when Mir Lincoln seemed to need l something to cheer him on, Hay read this | poem to him.
 'Lncoln liked it right we'll and insisted on it's being published. Hay protested for | some time, but finally yielded trembling | lest it be ridiculed everywhere But if | there ever was writer who went obscure | to bed at night to awake famous next morning 1t was Hay, and it was Little | Brooches that brought him fame. Hay had plenty of money while a stu | dent at Brown, and spent 1t freely. too, for | his father was well-to-do. though not as | rich by any means as Amasa Stone, whose | daughter later became Mrs. Hay. But John | was anything but foppish, or dudsh as | you would put it nowadays, and his clothes | were never of the latest cut. Neither did
 he select most of his friends from among | the rich of his fellow students. The penni- | less young man was just as likely to be a | special favorite with him as any one else, 1 and until the last year of his college course | he passed most of his hours of recreation
 among his fellows rather than in the social | circles of the town that were open to the | students.
 1 His close friends at Brown were Richard 1 Omey, who was later to hold the portfolio | of state, now soon to be placed in the hands | of Hay, and William l.. Stone, now pub-
 fisher of the New York Journal of Com- | merce Olney was two or three classes
 ahead of Hay, graduating in 1856, if re-
 member aright Stone was in the class of | 1858 with Hay"
 | HOBsoN's FUTURE WORK Washington. ID. C.. Sentemher 6-Naua