t
which we old fellows think was a good tough game for all that. I had
secured the ball, and thinking I had time, placed it rather leisurely,
promising myself an effective kick. A slight figure bounded with
lightning rush from the opposing line, and from under my very foot
drove the ball far behind me to a point which secured victory.

How little I knew that I had just witnessed a small exhibition of the
quickness and prompt decision which no long time after on critical
battle-fields were to be put to splendid use. He proved to be a nearly
perfect soldier; Sheridan said of him, that he knew of no virtue that
could be added to Lowell. To us he seems one of the manliest of men,
thoughtful for others, even for dumb beasts. In Edward Emerson's
charming life of him, nothing, perhaps, is sweeter than his affection
for his horses, of which it was said that thirteen were killed under
him before he came to death himself. He studied their characters as
if they had been human beings, and dwells in his letters on the
particular lovable traits each one showed--these mute companions who
stood so closely by him in life and death.

When our class first assembled in 1851 there was a slight boy
of seventeen in the company, Francis Channing Barlow. He was
inconspicuous through face or figure, but it early became clear that
he was to be our first scholar, and a wayward deportment with an
odd sardonic wit soon made him an object of interest. Barlow came
admirably fitted, and this good preparation, standing back of great
quickness and power of mind, made it easy for him almost without study
to take a leading place. As a boy he was well grounded, outside of his
special accomplishments, in Latin, Greek, and mathematics. I remember
his telling me that his mother read Plutarch to him when he was a
child, and that and many another good book he had thoroughly stored
away. Such accomplishments were an exasperation to us poor fellows who
had come in from the remote outskirts and found we must compete for
honours with men so well equipped. We perhaps magnified the gifts
and acquirements of the fellows who had been more favourably placed.
Barlow seemed like a paragon of scholarship, and the nonchalance with
which he always won in the classrooms was a constant marvel. He had a
queer way of turning serious things into fun. With a freshman
desire for self-improvement, a thing apt to evaporate in the college
atmosphere, we had formed a society for grave