orded his experiences from day to day, adding such
brief comments as the events called for, and time and opportunity
permitted. This diary he always kept upon his person, and while on a
long and hurried march, or in a battle with the enemy, his _vade mecum_
would be, of necessity, occasionally neglected, no sooner did the
opportunity offer than his mind wandered back over the few days'
interval since the previous entry, and each event of interest was duly
chronicled. Again during the period of his confinement in Southern
prisons, sick, and subjected to most inhuman treatment and privation,
and while escaping from his brutal captors, concealed in the swamps
during the day, tired, hungry, and cold, his diary was never forgotten,
albeit, the entries were frequently made under the greatest
difficulties, such as to most men would have proved insurmountable.

This journal was now in his possession. He had stirred the souls of
relatives and friends by reading from it accounts of bloody scenes
through which he had passed; of cruelties practised upon him and his
brother-patriots in Southern bastiles; of his various attempts to
escape, and pursuit by blood-hounds and their barbarous masters. The
story of his war experiences entranced hundreds of eager listeners
around his home, and the idea that now occurred to him, while anxiously
pondering the ways and means of paying his college fees, was, that his
story might possibly, by the aid of his diary, be arranged in the form
of a book, and if he were fortunate enough to find a sale for it, the
profits would probably furnish the very thing he stood so much in need
of.

Prompt in everything, the thought no sooner occurred to the young
candidate for college honors than he proceeded to reduce it to action.
He forthwith commenced arranging the facts and dates from the diary;
constructed sentences in plain Saxon English; the work grew upon him;
he "fought his battles o'er again;" was again captured, imprisoned and
escaped; the work continued to grow, and at the end of six weeks' hard
application, always keeping his _object_ in view, Willard Glazier, the
young cavalryman, found himself an author--_i. e._, in manuscript.

Not a little surprised and gratified to discover that he possessed the
gift of putting his thoughts in a readable form, he now felt hopeful
that the day was not distant when the desire of his soul to enter
college would be realized.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CAREER AS