I soon found that two of my children were old enough to pine for something more than physical comfort. They did not propose to live by bread alone. The appealing eyes of our daughter Gordon were not to be resisted and, as I have said, she entered the Packer Institute with her little sisters, entering the senior class, where she soon graduated with the first honors,—and where she nobly taught an advanced class,—relinquishing at eighteen years of age all the pleasures to which she was entitled. Theo, I supposed, would learn law in his father's office. But he, too, like Goethe, craved "more light." One day as I was returning from church he asked me, with suppressed feeling, if he was ever to go to college.

I was smitten to the heart! When I repeated this to his father, he declared, "He shall!" And within a few months a scholarship at Princeton was found and promised, provided the boy could pass a creditable entrance examination.

The little man went up alone early one morning to meet his fate. He returned at night. "And did you enter?" we exclaimed. Very calmly he answered: "They were very kind to me at Princeton. I was examined at some length, and I shall enter the junior class."

When I packed his small trunk for his collegiate 344life, I found I had little to put into it—little more than my tears! His first report read, "In a class of eighty-three he stands first."

He maintained this standing for two years. The class included bearded men who had been prepared thoroughly in the best preparatory schools. Theo had received less than two years at Mr. Gordon McCabe's school. All the rest of his time he had given to study, alone, and unassisted.

A day came in Petersburg when he, perceiving the necessities of his family, had sold his beloved rifle for $40. Out of that sum he reserved for himself $2, and returned home with a work on advanced mathematics under his arm.

He was a perfect boy. If he ever thought wrongly, I cannot tell—I know he never did wrong. Personally, he was as beautiful as he was good—clear-eyed, serene, with a grand air. "For the future of one of my children," I was wont to say, "I have no fear. Theo will always be fortunate." It was said of him by President McCosh that he was "preternaturally gifted mentally." He always acquired knowledge with perfect ease. He studied and read whatever his father studied or read—politics, literature, and even military tactics. In the latter he was so proficient that when a little lad in linen blouses, the regiments at Smithfield would mount him on a stand and make him drill the companies.

Theodorick Bland Pryor.

At the end of his collegiate life he wrote: "The professors have been so good as to give me the first honor and also the mathematical scholarship." 345This scholarship required him to study at least one year in an English university. Accordingly, in the following autumn he was sent, through President McCosh's advice, to St. Peters, Cambridge University. He was just nineteen when he graduated.

He was too young and inexperienced to be a good manager, and soon perceived that his $1000 would not carry him through his year. A prize of a Cambridge scholarship and $40 was offered. He worked for it and won it—binding wet towels around his tired brain as he worked.

I remember one lovely June afternoon, which melted into a perfect moonlight evening. My little girls, attired in white, listened to the home music,—Roger, with his violin, accompanied by his mother on the piano my dear Aunt Mary had bequeathed to Gordon. A hasty ring at the door, a rush of eager steps, and Theo was in my arms! We thought him lovely. His father proudly marked his fine air and, with amusement, the delicate hint of a rising inflection in his voice. Never were people so glad and proud. Once more we were all together.

He decided not to return to England, although his masters at Cambridge wrote him assuring him that, although he "could not win a fellowship without becoming a naturalized British subject," yet he would "ultimately take an excellent degree." He entered the Columbia Law School, that he might fit himself to be his father's partner.

In October he was called to a higher court. One warm evening he walked out "to cool off before sleeping," and we never saw him more! 346 The tides bore his beautiful body to us nine days after we lost him, and his beloved Alma Mater claimed it. There he lies in the section reserved for the presidents and professors of the University—side by side with the ashes of the Edwards and the Alexanders that await with him the great awakening. His classmates sent to Virginia fo............