Phillips Academy

With Christian and affectionate salutations to yourself, and through you to them, I remain

Your brother in the faith and work of the Lord,

W., GOODELL.

A few days later he wrote to his first preceptor, John Adams, LL.D. of Phillips Academy, for whom he ever cherished the warmest affection and the most profound respect: —

CONSTANTINOPLE, NOV. 19, 1841.

MY VERY DEAR PRECEPTOR, — Very kind, indeed, it was in you to remember me among so many hundreds of your disciples. I say disciples; for verily I believe we learned not only under you, but of you. The impressions I received at Phillips Academy were more vivid and more deep and lasting than those 1 received at college or at the Theological Seminary. And I feel that I have more of your character impressed on my own than of any other teacher. Perhaps one reason was, that I had just come out of the woods, and every thing was new to me. I was living in a new world. Thus new and wonderful does it often appear to a person when he is first translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.

It is nineteen years to-day since we were married, and in a few days it will be nineteen years since we sailed from New York for the East. More than half a generation has, during this time, gone to the other world. More than four hundred millions have done with time and probation, and have commenced their eternity. To my own family God has in His great mercy to the unworthy given an unusual degree of health and domestic comfort. To many daughters and sons do we sustain the relation of parents. But all are not now under our poor guidance and direction, for one, a beloved and promising boy of nine years and a half, ceased to be the object of our prayers, but not of our love, the 8th of April last, when “ he was not, for God took him.”