teacher, the Rev. John Shaw from Boston, Massachusetts--a man of even
temper, just, gentle, a profound scholar with a mind whose contagious
enthusiasm drew the spirits of the young as a magnet.

The Boy learned more under his guidance within a year than in all his
life before, and next full was ready to enter Transylvania University at
Lexington, Kentucky.

The polite, handsome boy from Mississippi who had served an
apprenticeship with his father's negroes in a cotton field, gave the
professors no trouble. Good-natured, prudent, joyous, kind, manly, he
attended to his lessons and his own business. He neither gambled nor
drank, nor mingled with the rowdy set. He had come there for something
else.

He had just passed his examinations for the Senior class in July, 1824,
when the first great sorrow came. The wise father whom he had grown to
love and reverence died in his sixty-eighth year.

His thoughtful Big Brother came in person to tell him and break the blow
with new ambitions and new hopes. He had secured an appointment from
President Monroe as a cadet to West Point from the State of Mississippi.

And then began the four years of stern discipline that makes a soldier
and fits him to command men.

But once in those busy years did the gay spirit within rise in
rebellion, to learn wisdom in the bitterness of experience.

With Emile Laserre, his jolly Creole friend from Louisiana, he slipped