I gained by the observations and experiences of my boyhood in the country tavern has been of the greatest service. ... The eminent political speakers were always entertained at our table, and some of them were very helpful friends in my later life." The building burned down in 1862, and the land was later submerged during the creation of the Scituate Reservoir. Education Angell attended the local school until the age of eight, when his parents placed him with a Quaker tutor who taught him arithmetic and surveying. At twelve, he left home to attend a seminary in Seekonk, Massachusetts, in order to study Latin, but after one term went to study at the Smithville Seminary, where he stayed until the age of fourteen. Unsure what career path to take, he had worked on the family farm for two summers, and also unsuccessfully attempted to find clerk jobs with Providence businesses. When his father informed him that he had the financial means to pay for college, Angell decided to attend Brown University. A year too young to enroll, he went first to University Grammar School in Providence, where one of his instructors was Henry S. Frieze, who would later serve as acting president of the University of Michigan while Angell was abroad on diplomatic assignments. In 1845, Angell began studying at Brown, which had a total of seven instructors on the faculty at the time. He graduated in 1849 and obtained part-time jobs working as an assistant librarian at the university and tutoring a boy whose eyesight prevented him from reading. In 1850, Angell came down with a cold and sore throat, but he refused to give his throat any rest from the daily exertion of reading aloud to his pupil. The resultant damage to his throat made extended speaking difficult for the rest of his life. Travels While Angell was recuperating, the father of his friend Rowland Hazard II, whose own grandson Rowland Hazard III would later be instrumental in the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous, suggested that Angell accompany Hazard on an upcoming winter tour of the South he was undertaking to help alleviate a lung ailment. The trip, which began on October 5, 1850, lasted seven and a half months and took Angell and Hazard throughout much of the South. The young men were introduced to the realities of slavery, including a whipping and a slave auction that