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before going on. Drank 7 or 8 glasses of iced lemonade of which Sedgwick made a bucket & brought it up to Mason's room!
He also mentions his attire on this important day, when he escorted his mother and sisters to the chapel wearing ‘black coat, new pants, dark “veskit,” blk stockings & pumps.’
His report of a later exhibition is not quite so creditable:—
Oct. 2.
Had the pleasure of finishing my oration & rewriting a good deal of it, wh. delighted me & I spent the rest of the day in reading Rookwood— also the eve'g—comfort, fire, 3 candles, rock'g chair.
Oct. 20.
Exhib. passed off well. . . . I was perfectly self-possessed, but owing to looking round on the audience &c. did n't know what I was saying, made mistakes, hesitated & omitted—but they did n't perceive it & thought it good.1
The next interesting event seems to have been
Wentworth's admission to the
Phi Beta Kappa.
In an address before this society, many years later, he said:—
I was chosen into it at sixteen, for we graduated from college earlier in my time than now; I took active part in later years, under strenuous opposition,
