Glazier, is only in the
natural course of his antecedents. Born as late as 1841, he has
already gone through the experiences of the Adamic labors of a
tiller of the soil, the hard toils of the student and of the
successful teacher; of the dashing and brilliant cavalry officer in
the Union army through the whole period of our late war, from its
disastrous beginning to its successful ending; of the sufferings of
capture and imprisonment in the notorious 'Libby,' and other
prisons, and of a daring and perilous escape from their cruel
walls; of an adventurous tourist on horseback through the most
civilized and savage portions of our continent, beginning with the
feet of his horse in the waters of the Atlantic, and ending with
their splash in the waters of the Pacific. He delivered lectures
along his route wherever a civilized audience could be collected,
and suffered capture by the Indians, with all its sensational
romance and hideous prospects.

"From the material of these antecedents he has written and
published several books of singular interest and national value.

"From this brief sketch we would naturally expect to see a stalwart
man, massive and powerful in form and muscle. Our conceptions of
men of big deeds is that they are also big. But David was a
stripling when he slew Goliath of Gath. Napoleon was characterized
by the society ladies of the period of his early career as 'Puss in
Boots,' Our own Fremont and Eads would seem at sight capable of
only the ordinarily exposed duties of life. Of like physique is the
subject of this introduction.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is now my pleasant privilege to introduce
to your acquaintance Captain Willard Glazier as the lecturer for
the evening."

Captain Glazier then delivered his interesting historical lecture on the
"Pioneers of the Mississippi." The adventures and discoveries of De
Soto, Marquette, La Salle, Hennepin, Joliet, and others, including the
more recent explorers, Pike, Beltrami, Schoolcraft, and Nicollet, were
intelligently discussed, and the attention of all present absorbed by
the interest of the subject. He spoke of the ambition of De Soto to
found an empire like that of Cortez in Mexico; of his arrival on the
banks of the Great River, and finally of his death and burial in its
depths. Concerning Father Marquette,