The country had been wrought up to the nullification measures. The South Carolina principles were at stake. They and the oppressive and "unrighteous tariff" were the staples of conversation. We, indeed, are not told of his study of these principles, but by 1833 he is found defending them bravely. He who knows our subject feels safe in saying that he had given the matter study before taking his stand in regard to it. These Walterboro years were important not only because of the stimulus to the formation of his views on civil matters, but because he then came, for the first time, under other teachers than his parents. The Hon. Daniel J. Pope, of Columbia, S. C., is our authority for the following account of the most influential teacher under whose influence "Ben Palmer came in this period:" The Rev. J. B. Van Dyck was not a great scholar. He was a rather poor mathematician; a good Latin scholar, but not a first-class Greek scholar. He knew enough to prepare men well for college. While not a great scholar he was a great teacher, he could tell what he knew so as to make a boy understand it. He could, and did, excite the ambition of his boys. Some men have great learning and no power to impart it. Others have no great learning but power to impart all they have, and to stimulate their more gifted pupils to attainments beyond the reach of their own achievements. Mr. Van Dyck belonged to the latter class. Without any extraordinary learning, he had wonderful power of impartation. In addition to the ordinary training of the schoolroom, Mr. Van Dyck established a debating society into which he introduced the boys. He sometimes presided. "While in other schools the boys were playing, in his school they were learning to debate and to speak."

With Mr. Pope, Mr. James Glover, of Walterboro, also, about eighty years of age, agrees as to most of the foregoing account of Mr. Van Dyck. He adds that Mr. Van Dyck was remarkable as a disciplinarian, being rigid to the point of severity.

These old gentlemen unite in affirming that "Ben Palmer" was "a good boy," "played little," and "studied hard,” “a model boy." Mr. Pope, who entered the school about the time young Palmer left, says, that "Palmer stood at the very head of this school, had learned all to be taught there by the time he was fourteen, and went at that age "to Amherst thoroughly prepared." Tradition also says that Ben Palmer was the prince

of debaters and speakers in that little debating society organized by Mr. Van Dyck. Amongst his schoolmates were Paul A. M. Williams, Laurence Fishburne, Cross-keys Oswald, Benjamin Whaley, and Dr. John O. Gilmer.

The venerable Mr. E. E. Bellinger, Episcopal minister in Walterboro, tells (in 1904) a story of young Palmer's schooldays which if it be authentic, betrays on the part of our subject wonderful self-possession. According to Mr. Bellinger, Ben Palmer had gotten into a fight with a larger boy of savage temper, was down, and the boy with a knife drawn was threatening to take his life. Lying on the ground Palmer looked his antagonist in the face and saw his savagery rampant-the fellow was afterwards driven out of his State on account of murder, and said to him, "Blank, I have but one dollar in the world but if you will spare my life I will give it to you.' The savage said, "That is not enough, Ben. You must do more. You have no trouble in reading Greek and Latin; I do, I can hardly read at all. You must read my language lessons from now till the end of the term." The agreement was made, and kept.

In the autumn of 1831 the Rev. Edward Palmer had been induced to accept a call from a Presbyterian church at Stony Creek, in Beaufort District. As he did not move his family until about a year had passed, his son had enjoyed the advantages of the Walterboro Academy during that year without separation from his father's family.

In the summer of 1832, in the fifteenth year of his age, he starts to a Northern college. His experiences there, and in the new home to which his father had removed prior to young Palmer's return "in disgrace," and his subsequent experiences in a Southern university are to be sketched in the ensuing chapter.

CHAPTER IV.

DAYS OF HIS COLLEGE TRAINING.

(1832-1838.)

GOES TO AMHERST COLLEGE, IN MASSACHUSETTS, 1832.-HIS CAREER THERE TILL THE SPRING OF 1834-HIS RETURN TO SOUTH CAROLINA. THE HOME OF HIS FATHER'S FAMILY AT THIS TIME.-HIS RECEPTION BY HIS PARENTS.-ENGAGED IN TEACHING, 1834-1836.— CONVERSION IN 1836, AND UNION WITH THE CHURCH IN MCPHERSONVILLE-ENTERS UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA, JANUARY, 1837.— CAREER IN THAT UNIVERSITY TILL AUGUST, 1838.-A QUESTION TO BE SOLVED.

T the age of fourteen "Ben Palmer" struck the ordinary observer as undersized; and as probably a youth of no special parts. The man of close observation noted many things in the youngster, however, which attracted attention. Undersized he certainly was; but his movements were graceful as those of a young leopard. From the toes of his pretty little feet to the top of his head he was lithe, supple, elastic, and apparently perfectly healthful. His hands seemed a little less delicately formed than his feet, but were small for a person of his size. If he wanted a trifle in breadth across the shoulders, he enjoyed a compensation for that defect in the depth of his chest. In his face there were warring elements. He was very dark, and had something about his lips (due in part it may be to the kick received from his father's horse), which suggested a highly sensitive and sensuous nature. But there was indomitable strength of will written on his lower jaw, and around that same homely mouth. He had a well-shaped but not large head. His nose was a good one on one side, disfigured slightly by the scar left by the hoof of the horse on the other. In the eyes were features that redeemed and transfigured the face. They always sparkled and changed with the changing thoughts and feelings by which he was possessed; and when he spoke his voice revealed another great attraction. It was a wonderful instrument: it had in it music and laughter, mourning and tears, the thunders of war, and the songs of peace. If he spoke of the waves you could hear their swish in that voice, gentle or swelling as he saw the waves them

selves. He thus plainly appeared to be a youth of extraordinary gifts. He himself, it was further noted, had no consciousness of this as yet. He was remarkably free from any selfconsciousness. He was, while not forward, easily accessible to his fellows, a remarkably well-bred young fellow.

He is pretty young to start out, all alone, for Amherst, in far-off Massachusetts. But he is of courageous stock; and we may think of his voyage as costing less of anxiety to his parents than most mothers and fathers would feel; and as looking to him as involving no risk in comparison with the ends to be gained by going. One thing tried him—the parting from home and mother. He had been a mother's boy. His disposition seems to have been much like hers. Between them there was a large and rich sympathy. They had had years of communing together of whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report.

The Rev. Edward Palmer did not go with his son to Charleston, secure passage with some reliable skipper for him, and see the lad safely aboard for the sail to New York. He did not even ask his elder brother, the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Morgan Palmer, of the "Circular Church" in the city of Charleston, to see his nephew and namesake safely aboard a suitable vessel. The lad was regarded as able to take care of himself. He accordingly went alone from his home in Walterboro to Charleston, provided for his own passage, and boarded his vessel. It would be interesting to know what he saw and heard on the voyage; what questions he put to the skipper and to his fellow-passengers; to know how he felt as the city of Charleston, the place of his birth, the home of his fathers, the capital of his State, faded from his view; and to know what he felt as he watched the rolling billows of the apparently limitless expanse of sea about him, borrowing and adding to their own the varying hues of the vast heavens above him. We may be certain that unusual thoughts and imaginations possessed him; and that had he expressed them, he would have done it in a style at once stately and beautiful, with a kind of high Alpine imagery. For such was his wont. He was of the class of beings who habitually, and of nature, express themselves in lofty and noble terms of sense, who see even commonplace things in their more dignified aspects.

After an uneventful voyage he reached New York, and thence made his way to the picturesque village of Amherst. The village of Amherst was to derive a long growing distinction as the seat of Amherst College. Here, on a hill, off from the forks of the Connecticut, the college had been planted in 1821. It was therefore, a very young college which this young South Carolinian had gone so far to enter. But while young, it had an efficient faculty. It had been founded mainly for the purpose of educating poor and pious young men for the Gospel ministry. There was a large charity fund which paid the tuition fees of a considerable number of students. Perhaps the chief considerations with his parents in making this choice of a college for their son, were the reputation of the place for piety (which stood then in striking contrast, in this respect, to the College of South Carolina), the hope that their son might there be converted and led to dedicate himself to the ministry, and the prospect of relatively small cost in educating him. Amherst was almost matchless at the time for offering literary advantages at little cost. Tuition and room rent could be obtained for $5.25 per term. Table board in a club was to be had at $1.25 per week. The very economical student could get through a year's study on a total expenditure, including that for clothes, of $150.00. There is no reason to suppose that young Palmer was expected to maintain himself on so small a sum; but he was expected to consult economy. His father had but a small salary on which to maintain and educate his family.

"A small group of Southern students nestled like birds in a nest, in that far-off New England clime. Five of the number hailed from Virginia, four from Georgia, and one poor lone speckled bird from South Carolina. The heart lingers a moment over this little coterie, trying to keep itself warm in that cold region by building close together in the bonds of a special friendship. Most of the group rose to eminence in different walks, but chiefly in the service of the church. The names, if given here to the reader, would be found familiar to history, either as Ambassadors at foreign courts, as Chancellors of Universities, or as Ecclesiastics or Divines. It was an uncanny time for Southern men to trim their sails for Northern seas. The Nullification storm had just burst over the country, and was not yet appeased: The abolition fanaticism was rising to the height of its frenzy. The elements of conflict were gathering in the theological world, which a little later resulted in the schism rending the Presbyterian Church asunder. The sky was full of portents, and the air