Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/592

550 commencement season; and the orator's plea for the new and growing West as the field for the young scholar sank deep into his mind. The next year he spent in graduate study at Yale, and before its end, declining all other offers, he had accepted the chair of History and English Literature at the University of Michigan.

He was but five and twenty, and looked a boy, but the vigor of his thought and the finish of his style soon dispelled all doubt as to his maturity. "He came to Ann Arbor," says one who then listened to him, "fresh from European studies, and he entered upon his labor with that peculiar enthusiasm which is instantly caught by students, and is perhaps the most successful element of all good teaching. His instruction in history was a genuine revelation to those who had been accustomed to perfunctory text-book work and the hearing of dry and colorless lectures. The exceptional excellence of his instruction consisted largely of the spirit which he infused into his students. He had in a remarkable degree the rare gift of seizing upon the most important principles and causes and presenting them in such a manner as to illuminate the whole course of events with which they were connected. He not only instructed, but, what was even more important, he inspired. While he remained in his chair perhaps no study in the university was pursued with so much enthusiasm by the mass of students as was that of history."

In the general development of the university he was like his old friend Frieze, whom, to his joy, he found a fellow-member of the Michigan faculty, a loyal supporter and adviser of President Tappan. And there was work to do outside the institution. The university, in order to keep its hold on the State, from which it drew its support, loved to send out its faculty as lecturers into the towns and villages of Michigan, and into this task, too, the young Professor of History went with zest and success.

On the eve of his going to Michigan he had married, at Syracuse, Mary Outwater, a neighbor's daughter, whom he had known and admired since her childhood. He was fond of entertaining his colleagues and students; and Mrs. White united in her character a sweetness and a dignity which made her the most charming of hostesses. Their home soon became at Ann Arbor, as afterward at Cornell, the very heart of the university's social life. There, in his growing library, amid the influences of art and music so dear to him. Prof. White ministered a hospitality which could have meant hardly less to the culture of those who shared it than did the work of his classroom.

The death of his father, in 1860, brought upon him the cares of fortune; his health, never strong, flagged under the accumulated burden. In 1862 he found it wise to ask a leave of absence, and sailed with his family, now numbering a daughter and a son