. It is strange that the intimacy between
Brackenridge and Freneau did not lead to their rooming together while at
College, Brackenridge giving way to James Madison. But we do know that
the two were very intimately associated in early literary work, and, in
the manuscript book just mentioned, there is contained the fragment of a
novel written alternately by the two, and called "Father Bombo's
Pilgrimage to Mecca in Arabia."

Then followed "The Rising Glory of America," which, when Brackenridge
graduated, September 25, 1771, was announced on the program of
events--afternoon division--as being entirely by himself. This must have
been an oversight, inasmuch as Freneau had more than a mere hand in the
execution of the piece, and inasmuch as we possess Brackenridge's own
confession "that on his part it was a task of labour, while the verse of
his associate flowed spontaneously."

The college life of the time was not devoted entirely to literary
creativeness or to political discussions. There is published an address
by President Witherspoon to the inhabitants of Jamaica (1772), in which
he outlined the course of study to which the students were subjected. It
indicates, very excellently, the classical training that Brackenridge,
Freneau, and Madison had to undergo. In fact, we find, on Commencement
Day, Freneau debating on "Does Ancient Poetry excel the Modern?" and
throwing all his energy in favour of the affirmative argument. And
Brackenridge, selected to deliver the Salutatory, rendered it in Latin,
"De societate hominum." (See Pennsylvania _Chronicle_; John Maclean's
"History of the College of New Jersey," i, 312; Madison's correspondence
while a student; also Philip Vickers Fithian's Journal and Letters:
1764-1774. Student at Princeton College: 1770-1772. Tutor at Nomini Hall
in Virginia: 1773-1774. Ed. ... by J. R. Williams. Princeton, 1900.) The
Princeton historian points to this class of 1771 as being so patriotic
that a unanimous vote was taken to appear at graduation in nothing but
things of American manufacture.[3]

This much we do know regarding the early life of Brackenridge: that he
was always pressed for money, that it was his indefatigableness and
thirst for knowledge which carried him through the schools of the time,
and through college.

His son even confesses that his father was obliged, on one occasion, to
write an address which one of the students had to deliver, and to
receive in payment therefor a ne