al independence, while others became leaders in the church, and distinguished educators of youth. Probably no class that has gone forth from the college or university in her palmiest days of prosperity has exerted so widely extended and so beneficial an influence, the times and circumstances taken into account, as this first class that graduated at Warren. The occasion drew together a large concourse of people from all parts of the Colony, inaugurating, says Arnold, the earliest State holiday in the history of Rhode Island. A contemporary account preserves the interesting facts that both the President and the candidates for degrees were dressed in clothing of American manufacture, and that the audience, composed of many of the first ladies and gentlemen of the Colony, "behaved with great decorum."
Up to this date, "the Seminary," says Morgan Edwards, "was, for the most part, friendless and moneyless, and therefore forlorn, insomuch that a college edifice was hardly thought of." But the interest manifes
