Student essay composed by Thomas Mason, 1796

Three-page folio-sized handwritten student essay composed by Thomas Mason as a Harvard undergraduate. The verso of the last page is inscribed "Mason February 1796." A quotation from Edward Young appears at the top of the first page: "Heaven gives us friends to bless the present science; / Resumes them, to prepare us for the rest." The essay discusses friendship and the death of friends, and begins, "The author of our nature has so constituted it, that pleasure is unknown without the intervention of pain."

Title supplied by cataloger. Item received January 19, 1923 from the library of Professor Charles Eliot Norton.

Thomas Mason (1769-1851), a minister in Northfield, Mass., was born on May 28, 1769 in Princeton, Mass. He received an AB from Harvard in 1796 and an AM in 1799. At Harvard, Mason was known as the “College Lion” and considered the College’s best wrestler. He was ordained as the minister of Northfield in 1799 and served until 1830. Mason died on January 3, 1851.