society, may refine the manners, but they never soften the heart to generous emotions, where nature has refused to sow its seed.  But where her hand has been liberal in this divine dispensation, no misfortune, no want of education or association, will prevent their germination and fructification.  Such hearts divide their joys and their sorrows, with the fortunate and afflicted, with the same emotional sincerity with which they lift their prayers to Heaven.

The school-room is an epitome of the world.  There the same passions influence the conduct of the child, which will prompt it in riper years, and the natural buddings of the heart spring forth, and grow on to maturity with the mind and the person.  College life is but another phase of this great truth, when these natural proclivities are more manifest, because more matured.  It is not the greatest mind which marks the greatest soul, and it is not the most successful who are the noblest and best.  The shrewd, the mean, and the selfish grow rich, and are prosperous, and are courted and preferred, because there are more who are mean and venal in the world than there are who are generous and good.  But it is the generous and good who are the great benefactors of mankind; and yet, if there was no selfishness in human nature, there would be no means of doing good.  Wealth is the result of labor and economy.  These are not incompatible with generosity and ennobling manliness.  The proper discrimination in the application of duties and donations toward the promotion of useful institutions, and the same discrimination in the dispensation of private charities, characterize the wise and good of the world.  These attributes of mind and heart are apparent in the child; and in every heart, whatever its character, there is a natural respect and love for these, and all who possess them.  Such grow with their growth in the world’s estimation, and are prominent, however secluded in their way of life, or unpretending in their conduct, with all who know them, or with whom, in the march of life, they come in contact.

It is to but few that fortune throws her gifts, and these are rarely the most deserving, or the goddess had not been represented with a bandage over her eyes.  She is blind, and though her worshippers are many, she kisses but few, and cannot see if they be fair and beautiful or crooked and ugly.  Hence most of those who receive her favors conceal them in selfishness, and hoard them to be despised; while hundreds, slighted of her gifts, cultivate the virtues, which adorn and ennoble, and are useful and beloved.

Will you, who yet live, and were children when I was a child, turn back with me in memory to those days, and to those who were your school-fellows and playmates then?  Do you remember who were the brave and generous, kind and truthful among them? and do you recall their after lives?  Answer me; were not these the true men in that day?  Do you remember William C. Dawson, Joseph H. Lumpkin, Lucius Q.C.