Henry Noble Day

Background

Henry Noble Day was born on August 4, 1808 in New Preston, Connecticut. He was the son of Noble and Elizabeth (Jones) Day.

Education

Almost from the cradle to the grave his life lay within the influence of Yale College.

After obtaining his first instruction in the local academy and in a family school, he was sent for three years to the Hopkins Grammar School at Hartford, where he had Solomon Stoddard (Yale 1820) and Edward Beecher (Yale 1822) for preceptors.

Career

Day taught for one year in John Gummere’s seminary at Burlington, New Jersey, studied law in Philadelphia with Charles Chauncey (Yale 1792), was tutor at Yale 1831-34, traveled for a year in Europe.

On November 9, 1836, he was ordained and installed as pastor of the First Church of Waterbury, Connecticut.

In 1840 he went to Hudson, Ohio, as one of the professors of theology in Western Reserve College, where he remained till 1858, laboring with his colleagues to make the institution even in matters of architecture an exact duplicate of Yale.

After 1852, however, his connection with the institution was nominal, the theological department having disappeared during the troubles that beset the administration of President George E. Pierce.

For a while Day edited the Ohio Observer and dabbled in railroading as a director of the former Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad, and as president for a few months of a branch road connecting Hudson with Akron. He is also said to have conceived grandiose plans for an East and West trunk system.

Day returned to New Haven, where he remained for the rest of his life, and devoted himself to writing text-books, of which he produced almost twenty in all.

He began with bookkeeping, grammar, and rhetoric but later turned to the group of subjects then known as the “mental sciences. ”

In rhetoric he claimed some originality in emphasizing content more than expression; his books on esthetics, ethics, psychology, and philosophy all belong to the period when these subjects, in American education, were still the handmaidens of theology; and since his style lacks animation his books are now of interest only to historians of education. In their generation, however, they filled a worthy place.

Achievements

• Day served as president of Ohio Female College at College Hill.

Works

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  • Rhetorical Praxis: The Principles of Rhetoric, Exemplified and Applied in Copious Exercises for Systematic Practice, Chiefly in the Development of the ... Use in Schools and Colleges (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Rhetorical Praxis: The Principles of Rhetori...)

  • Elements Of Psychology

    (Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating bac...)

  • The Science of Aesthetics, or, The Nature, Kinds, Laws, and Uses of Beauty

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • The Art of Discourse: A System of Rhetoric, Adapted for Use in Colleges and Academies, and Also for Private Study 1867

    (Originally published in 1867. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • Elements of Logic: Comprising the Doctrine of the Laws and Products (Classic Reprint)
  • The Art of Discourse: A System of Rhetoric,

Connections

On April 27, 1836 Day married Jane Louisa, daughter of Simeon Marble, of New Haven, who survived him with one son and two daughters.

Father:

Noble Day

Mother:

Elizabeth (Jones) Day

Wife:

Jane Louisa