Mr. PRESIDENT:  My acquaintance with WILLIAM HENRY FITZHUGH LEE commenced in the summer of 1854, when we met at Cambridge as members of the new freshman class at Harvard College.  He was just then entering his eighteenth year, was well grown for his age, tall, vigorous, and robust, open and frank in his address, kind and genial in his manners.  He entered upon his college life with many advantages in his favor.  The name of Lee was already upon the rolls of the university, for other representatives of different branches of the family had entered and graduated in the years gone by and had left pleasant memories behind them.  His distinguished lineage made him a welcome guest in the older families of the University city, and of Boston, its near neighbor, who felt a just pride in the historic and traditional associations connected with the earlier history of the country, and many of the influential members of the class belonged to such families.

He was rather older than the average age of his classmates, and his life had been spent amid surroundings that had enabled him to see a good deal of society and the world, so that he brought with him into his college life a more matured mind and a greater insight than the student usually possesses at the threshold of his career.  He had enjoyed excellent advantages in preparing for the entering examinations, and was well grounded in the languages as well as mathematics, so that he entered the class well fitted for the course of study to be pursued.  Thus, from the first, he was prominent in the university, and soon became popular among his classmates, and his prominence and popularity were maintained during his stay among us.

This was due not to superior distinction in any particular study or in any one feature of college life, but rather to his general standing and characteristics.  He kept pace with his classmates in the recitation room, not so much by hard and continuous study as by his quick comprehension and ready grasp of the subject in hand and the general fund of knowledge at his command.  He was of a friendly and companionable nature, and there were abundant opportunities in a large class to develop this disposition, cultivate social intercourse, and strengthen the bonds of good fellowship.  He had been accustomed to an outdoor life in his Virginia home, and his manly training had given him an athletic frame which required constant and vigorous exercise.  This he sought in active sports on the football ground and in the class and college boat clubs, where he was welcomed as a valuable auxiliary.

In a large university—­and Harvard had gained that rank even as far back as those days—­there are various fields of action, and other honors are recognized than those marked on the catalogue or contained in the degrees.  The graduate who excels in mathematics, the languages, the arts and sciences, is decked with the highest honor on commencement day, but there are unwritten honors given by general consent of classmates