Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/247

 secured the coveted prize. Yet the fate that too often awaits the slow but sure swiftly overtook him: apparently exhausted by his effort, he died the same year.

Samuel Kinsley Glover of Milton had matriculated in the class of 1778, but it seems doubtful whether he had taken up his college work. At any rate, before the end of what might have been his freshman year, he harkened to a call of duty more imperative than any ever issued by President and Faculty. After serving as one of the minutemen from Braintree he entered the hospital as mate. He seems to have stuck by his profession through thick and thin—especially thin. A pathetically boyish letter from him, dated November 5, 1776, complains of the expenses of army life: “I am in such a condition as to clothes (of which I need not mention the price) that I am ashamed to go into gentlemen’s company, because of my rags, and no doubt they are as much of me as I am of myself.” Soon after this he shifted to the less exacting berth of surgeon on a privateer, but came ashore again in 1778, to take charge of the smallpox hospital for the “Convention Troops” of Burgoyne, then imprisoned on Prospect Hill, Somerville. After the war he built a large house on Milton Hill and became one of the town worthies—the first postmaster, selectman for 25 years,