small arena of
a village debating-club, he stood up as the champion of the slave, that
the day was not far distant when he would ride rowel-deep in carnage
upon battle-fields which war's sad havoc had made sickening, fighting
for the same cause in whose behalf he now so eloquently spoke.

No prophetic vision of what fate held in store for him appeared to the
ardent boy, speaking for those who could not rise from the darkness of
their bondage to speak for themselves. No glimpse of weary months
dragged out in Confederate prisons--of hair-breadth escapes from dangers
dread and manifold--of hiding in newly-dug graves made to assist the
flight of the living, not to entomb the dead--of lying in jungles and
cypress-swamps while fierce men and baffled hounds were panting for his
blood--of vicissitudes and perils more like the wild creations of some
fevered dream than the plain and unvarnished reality: nothing of all
this came before him to trouble his young hopes or cloud his bright
anticipations of the future.

He spoke of freedom, and had never seen a slave. He pictured the cruelty
of the lash used in a Christian land on Christian woman, be she black or
white. He spoke of the deeper wrong of tearing the new-born babe from
its mother's breast to sell it by the pound--of dragging the woman
herself from the father of her child and compelling her to mate with
other men--of the fact that such wrongs were not alone the offspring of
cruel hearts, nor of brutal owners, but arose from the mere operation of
barbarous laws where masters, if left to themselves, would have been
most kind. He spoke of such things as these, and yet he never dreamed
that his words were but the precursors of deeds that would make mere
words seem spiritless and tame.

Young Glazier spoke well. The little magnates of the place,--the older
men, after this, talked of him as of one likely to rise, to become a man
of note, and their manner grew more respectful towards the young
school-master. His occupations and amusements at this period of his
existence, though simple in their character, were considerably varied.

Among other entries in his journal about this date, is one that so
commends itself by its brevity and comprehensiveness that I quote it
_verbatim_.

"Having," he says, "received an invitation upon the twenty-fourth of
December, I attended a party at the residence of Jeptha Clark, whose
excellent wife received me very kindly; upon Christmas day I vis