It was her great anxiety to give
all her children the best education, within the means of the family,
which the state of the country would allow; and she was particularly
desirous that Jeremiah should be sent to college. "In my recollection of
my mother," says Mr. Mason, "she was the personification of love,
kindness, and benevolence."
Destined for an education and for professional life, Mr. Mason was sent
to Yale College, at sixteen years of age; his preparatory studies having
been pursued under "Master Tisdale," who had then been forty years at
the head of a school in Lebanon, which had become distinguished, and
among the scholars of which were the Wheelocks, afterwards Presidents of
Dartmouth College. He was graduated in 1784, and performed a part in the
Commencement exercises, which greatly raised the expectation of his
friends, and gratified and animated his love for distinction. "In the
course of a long and active life," says he, "I recollect no occasion
when I have experienced such elevation of feeling." This was the effect
of that spirit of emulation which incited the whole course of his life
of usefulness. There is now prevalent among us a morbid and sickly
notion, that emulation, even as honorable rivalry, is a debasing
passion, and not to be encouraged. It supposes that the mind should be
left without such excitement, in a dreamy and undisturbed state, flowing
or not flowing, according to its own impulse, without such aids as are
furnished by the rivalry of one with another.
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