Mr. Choate expressed
a grave doubt whether the professor could dine comfortably
without a blackboard.
John W. Webster gave lectures to the boys on chemistry and
geology which they were compelled to attend. I think the
latter the most tedious human compositions to which I ever
listened. The doctor seemed a kind-hearted, fussy person.
He was known to the students by the sobriquet of Sky-rocket
Jack, owing to his great interest in having some fireworks
at the illumination when President Everett was inaugurated.
There was no person among the Faculty at Cambridge who seemed
less likely to commit such a bloody and cruel crime as that
for which he was executed. The only thing that I know which
indicated insensibility was that when he was lecturing one
day in chemistry he told us that in performing the experiment
which he was then showing us a year or two before with some
highly explosive gas a copper vessel had burst and a part
of it had been thrown with great violence into the back of
the bench where a row of students were sitting, but fortunately
the student who sat in that place was absent that day and
nobody was hurt.
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