shown into the office. He was tall and straight, with
square shoulders and a deep chest. His hair was gray, and a rather long
white beard added to the effect of age, but detracted not an iota from
the evidences of strength and vigor. He had the look of a Westerner,--of
a man who had lived much of his life in the open. There was a ruggedness
about him, a sturdy strength that told of many a day's toil along the
trail, and many a night's sleep under the stars.

In a few words he stated the purpose of his visit. He simply wished to
do what half a hundred others in the course of the year had entered that
office for the purpose of doing. He wished to enroll as a student in the
college and to prepare himself for a teacher. This was not ordinarily a
startling request, but hitherto it had been made only by those who were
just starting out on the highroad of life. Here was a man advanced in
years. He told me that he was sixty-five, and sixty-five in that country
meant old age; for the region had but recently been settled, and most of
the people were either young or middle-aged. The only old men in the
country were the few surviving pioneers,--men who had come in away back
in the early days of the mining fever, long before the advent of the
railroad. They had trekked across the plains from Omaha, and up through
the mountainous passes of the Oregon trail; or, a little later, they had
come by steamboat from St. Louis up the twelve-hundred-mile stretch of
the Missouri until their progress had been stopped by the Great Falls in
the very foothills of the Rockies. What heroes were these graybeards of
the mountains! What possibilities in knowing them, of listening to the
recounting of tales of the early days,--of running fights with the
Indians on the plains, of ambushments by desperadoes in the mountain
passes, of the lurid life of the early mining camps, and the desperate
deeds of the Vigilantes! And here, before me, was a man of that type.
You could read the main facts of his history in the very lines of his
face. And this man--one of that small band whom the whole country united
to honor--this man wanted to become a student,--to sit among adolescent
boys and girls, listening to the lectures and discussions of instructors
who were babes in arms when he was a man of middle life.

But there was no doubt of his determination. With the eagerness of a
boy, he outlined his plan to me; and in doing this, he told me the story
of his life,--ju