Never did any one have a better start in life than Tom. Born of
Christian parents, he inherited from them no bad defects, moral or
physical. He was built on a liberal plan, having a large head, large
hands, large feet, large body, and within all, a heart big with
generosity. His face was the embodiment of good nature, and his laugh
was musical and infectious. Being an only child there was no one to
share with him the lavish love of his parents. They saw in him nothing
less than a future President of the United States, and they made every
sacrifice to fit him for his coming position. He was a prime favorite
with all, and being a born leader, he was ungrudgingly accorded that
position by his playmates at school and his fellows at the university.
He wrestled with rhetoric, and logic, and political economy, and
geometry, and came off an easy victor; he put new life into the dead
languages, dug among the Greek roots by day and soared up among the
stars by night. None could outstrip him as a student, and he easily
held his place at the head of his class. The dullest scholar found in
him a friend and a helper, while the brighter ones found in his
example, an incentive to do their best.

In athletic sports, too, he was excelled by none. He could run faster,
jump higher, lift a dumb-bell easier, strike a ball harder, and pull as
strong an oar as the best of them. He was the point of the flying
wedge in the game of foot-ball, and woe be to the opponent against whom
that point struck. To sum it all up, Tom was a mental and physical
giant, as well as a superb specimen of what that college could make out
of a young man. But unfortunately, it was one of those institutions
that developed the mental, trained the physical, and starved the
spiritual, and so it came to pass ere his college days were ended, Tom
had an enemy, and that enemy was the bottle.

The more respectable you make sin, the more dangerous it is. An old
black bottle in the rough hand of the keeper of a low dive, would have
no power to cause a clean young man to swerve from the right course,
but he is a hero ten times over, who can withstand the temptation of a
wine glass in the jeweled fingers of a beautiful young lady. Tom's
tempter came in the latter form, and she who might have spurred him on
to the highest goal, and whispered in his ear, "look not thou upon the
wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it
moveth itself aright,"