inadvertently dropped in conversation, or something accidentally overheard.

Be this as it may, there was much difficulty in our society both as to the first and second honor. The selection of the candidates was to be made by the majority of the society, and the minority were considered as bound in honor to support them in the election by the class. My friends in the society nominated me to deliver the Valedictory. My principal opponent was Henry Williams, of Pennsylvania, who afterwards became a distinguished clergyman of the Presbyterian Church. He was a man of fine talents, a good scholar, very much respected by the class, and we regarded him as an eloquent speaker. The contest was a very animated one, and both of the candidates not a little anxious. I was selected by a majority of the society, and became its candidate for the honor. Why I was selected in preference to Mr. Williams, I can hardly now say. He was several years older than myself, and his mind more matured, and would very probably have performed the duty better. But he entered college in the senior class, and came there, it was understood, merely to obtain a diploma in order to qualify him to become a minister of the church to which he belonged. His age (for he had arrived at the age of manhood before he came among us) and his pursuits and destination prevented him from mingling as much as I did among

the students, and partaking in their amusements and athletic exercises. Besides, I had been much longer in the college, and much longer associated with the society to which we belonged. And as I now look back to what may be called my first entrance into public life in this little republic, the "Belles-Lettres Society," I am persuaded that the strong attachments which boys of good feelings form to one another, when they have been long daily companions in study and in play, must have contributed quite as much to the earnestness displayed in my behalf as any supposed superior fitness on my part. Mr. Williams and his friends faithfully supported the nomination at the election by the class.

This election, as I have said, was doubtful until the ballots were counted. The outsiders kept their intentions to themselves. But I succeeded by a close vote; I think a majority of two only. This result was mainly due to my classmate John Lyon, who, I found afterwards, had not only voted for me, but taken an interest in my behalf among those who were not members of either society. We, however, lost our candidate for the Salutatory oration. Mr. McConaughy, the nominee of the Philosophical Society, was selected, and delivered the oration. He was a very fine scholar, and worthy of the honor conferred upon him. He was amiable and kind in his disposition, and modest and retiring in his habits. He, like Mr. Williams,

became a minister of the Presbyterian Church. I met him often afterwards, and we renewed our college friendship; and I had the pleasure of voting for him as the Principal of the Frederick Academy, of this State, when I resided in that town, and was a trustee of the school.

It may well be supposed that I was much gratified by my success. It could not, I suppose, be otherwise with a boy between eighteen and nineteen years of age, to whom the college was as yet his world, and whose name, by this election, was inscribed upon its record as one of its honored sons; but, as most commonly happens to successful ambition in a wider world, I soon found that success had brought with it troubles and anxieties. to which I had before been a stranger.

I had to write an oration, which, from its character, would be more likely to attract attention and provoke criticism than any other in the class. It was to be submitted to Dr. Nisbet before it was delivered, and I knew and felt the great superiority of his judgment and taste, and feared he might find it all wrong. It was to be delivered in the presence of a large and highly intelligent audience of ladies and gentlemen, who always attended the college Commencement; and I was unaccustomed to composition. For in the Belles-Lettres Society our exercises consisted of debating a question agreed on, or of delivering an oration selected from some speech and committed to

memory, or in reciting passages from a poem or play. The manual labor of writing was always unpleasant to me; and, although some of the members of the society occasionally wrote out their speeches and read them in the debate, and sometimes read an essay upon some subject selected by themselves, yet I never had done so. My speeches in the debate were always made from very brief notes, unintelligible and unmeaning to everybody but myself-consisting of the heads and order of the argument I intended to offer, each head containing only a few words to recall to my memory the point I meant to urge. And when I sat down to write this valedictory oration, I had never written a paragraph of my own composition, except familiar and unstudied letters to my family.

This oration cost me much trouble and anxiety. I took great pains with it, and perhaps should have done better if I had taken less. I remember well that my greatest difficulty was how to begin it; and the first two or three sentences gave me nearly as much trouble as all the rest of it put together. I am quite sure that I spent hours upon them, and wrote them over at least a dozen times. However, the speech was worked out at last, and submitted to Dr. Nisbet; and I was much relieved when he returned it to me with only one or two slight verbal alterations.

But now came my severest trial. The Commencement was held in a large Presbyterian church, in

which Dr. Nisbet and Dr. Davidson preached alternately. A large platform of unplaned plank was erected in this church in front of the pulpit, and touching it, and on a level with its floor. From this platform the graduate spoke, without even, I think, a single rail on which he could rest his hand while speaking. In front of him was a crowded audience of ladies and gentlemen; behind him, on the right, sat the professors and trustees in the segment of the circle; and on the left, in like order, sat the graduates who were to speak after him; and in the pulpit, concealed from public view, sat some fellow-student, with the oration in his hand, to prompt the speaker if his memory should fail him. I evidently could not have been very vain of my oration, for I never called on my prompter for it, and have never seen it since it was delivered, nor do I know what became of it. I sat on this platform, while oration after oration was spoken, awaiting my turn, thinking over what I had to say, and trying to muster up courage enough to speak it with composure. But I was sadly frightened, and trembled in every limb, and my voice was husky and unmanageable. I was sensible of all this, much mortified by it; and my feeling of mortification made matters worse. Fortunately, my speech had been so well committed to memory, that I went through without the aid of the prompter. But the pathos of leavetaking from the professors and my classmates, which