TIMOTHY DWIGHT, one of the most capable educators this country has ever known, was graduated from Yale University in 1849; studied theology there. He was in Europe several years perfecting his education, being in attendance upon lectures at the universities at Bonn and Berlin, Germany. In 1886 he succeeded to the Presidency of Yale University upon the retirement of President Noah Porter, and remained at the head of that institution until 1999, when Professor Arthur T. Hadley was chosen for that office. President Dwight's advanced age was the reason that he cared to give up the position, the burdens of which were very heavy upon him. President Dwight was a member of the American Commission for the revision of the English version of the Bible, serving with that body from 1878 until 1885. He was born in Connecticut in 1828.

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THOMAS ALVA EDISON, the "Wizard of Electricity," was too poor to secure an education at the schools, so he began selling newspapers on railway trains at twelve, made money, printed a paper on the train, and learned telegraphy. He is Ohio born, being fifty-four years old in the second month of 1901; while an operator he invented duplex telegraphy and the printing by telegraph of stock quotations as the tape comes out of the "ticker"; later he developed his first invention so that now six messages can be sent over wire while six are passing over it in the opposite direction; then came the telephone transmitter, the megaphone, the aerphone, the microtasimeter, the phonograph, the phonometer, the incandescent light, the commercial subdivision in a system of general distribution of electricity-a feat the wisest men maintained was impossible. (47)

JONATHAN EDWARDS, theologian and educator, possessed a character of the utmost sweetness and purity. His was a life of the hardest toil, with small recompense, but his memory will live as long as the Republic of the United States endures. His name has been placed upon one of the tablets in "The Hall of Fame for Great Americans," by the side of others who devoted their lives to the benefit of their country and the people of the world at large. In 1758 he was elected President of Yale University, but occupied that position but thirty-four days, having been stricken with that most malignant of diseases, small-pox. For twenty-four years he occupied a pulpit at Northampton, Massachusetts, after which he was a missionary among the Indians of the Housatonnuck tribe. He was born in Connecticut in 1703.

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CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, elected to the Presidency of Harvard University in 1869, a position he yet holds (1901), is one of the ablest men engaged in the management of institutions of learning. He was graduated from Harvard in 1853, and not long afterwards was called to the chair of mathematics and chemistry. When he assumed the Presidency. many changes were made in the manner of conducting the business affairs of the university, all of which were for the good. It is said that President Hadley, of Yale, has determined that "Old Eli" shall lead Harvard in the near future, and President Eliot is accordingly on his mettle. He was born in Massachusetts in 1834. (49)

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, essayist, author, philosopher, preacher and scholar, was of Boston birth; he died at Concord, the center of philosophical teachings, in 1882, at the advanced age of seventy-nine. Emerson's character was a beautiful one in every way; his writings have a grace and charm possessed by none others; his ideals were always high, as is evidenced by his advice to the aspiring youth of America-"Hitch your wagon to a star." His pulpit oratory was simple, eloquent and effective, but he did not preach much after his twenty-ninth year. In 1833, while in England, he visited Carlyle, Coleridge and Wordsworth and formed friendships which were only terminated by death. Emerson was regarded as the chief of what was known as the Transcendentalist School, which classification, however, was hardly warranted, as its members had no common aim. (50)