Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/218



ENJAMIN, SAMUEL GREENE WHEELER. That "a rolling stone gathers no moss" is a time-honored maxim of proverbial philosophy. But the exceptions to the implied law are too brilliantly suggestive to leave it a deterrent force when one is strongly called to a work that demands a change in place or in occupation. The career of the man of varied pursuits and wide wanderings who forms the subject of this sketch, is a case in point. Of American parentage, he was born in the town of Argos, Greece, on the thirteenth of February, 1837, his father, Nathan Benjamin, an accomplished scholar, being then a missionary in that land, and for four years acting United States consul at Athens. Mr. Benjamin's marked literary ability may have been an inheritance from his mother, Mary Gladding Wheeler, who was author of the "Missionary Sisters" and of poems of some excellence, and who exerted a very beneficial influence upon his forming character and tastes. The family descended in America from John Benjamin of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1632, and included on both sides several men of distinction in the Colonial and Revolutionary wars. During seventeen years of his boyhood and youth Mr. Benjamin traveled much on the lands and waters of Greece, and lived also in Trebizond, Smyrna, and Constantinople, in which cities his father was stationed for some years, in various duties. His ninth year was passed in America. The boy, frail in infancy, grew robust in this wandering life. He gained useful experience of men and manners. He studied art, in black and white, and in aquarelle, with a very sympathetic and gifted Italian artist. His education in other directions was gained partly in the English college at Smyrna, and on his return to America after his father's death he entered Williams college, where he was graduated A.B. in 1859.

Mr. Benjamin's mother had instilled in him in early youth a love of literature, and several Atlantic voyages had given him a warm predilection for the sea, while the beautiful scenery of Greece tended