Toward the close of my first year in Williams College a misfortune occurred which threatened to be very serious.  Studying by defective light injured my eyes.  They quickly became so sensitive that I could scarcely endure lamplight or the heat of a stove, only the cold out-door air relieving the pain; so I spent much time in wandering about in the boisterous weather of early spring in Williamstown.  At last I became so discouraged that I went to President Hopkins and told him that I feared I must give up the purpose of acquiring an education.  Never can I forget how that grand old man met the disheartened boy.  Speaking in the wise, friendly way which subdued the heart and strengthened the will, he made the half-hour spent with him the turning-point of my life.  In conclusion, he advised me to enter the Senior class the following fall, thus taking a partial course of study.  How many men are living to-day who owe much of the best in their lives to that divinely inspired guide and teacher of youth!

I next went to another man great in his sphere of life—­Dr. Agnew, the oculist.  He gave my eyes a thorough examination, told me that he could do nothing for them; that rest and the vigor acquired from out-door life would restore them.  He was as kind and sympathetic in his way as the college president, and charged but a trifle, to relieve me from the sense of taking charity.  Dr. Agnew’s words proved correct; and the following autumn I entered the class of ’61, and spent a happy year.  Some of my classmates were very kind in reading aloud to me, while Dr. Hopkins’s instruction was invaluable.  By the time I entered Auburn Theological Seminary, my eyes were quite restored, and I was able to go through the first year’s course of study without difficulty.  In the summer of 1862 I could no longer resist the call for men in the army.  Learning that the Second New York (Harris’s Light) Cavalry was without a chaplain, I obtained the appointment to that position.  General Kilpatrick was then lieutenant-colonel, and in command of the regiment.  In December, 1862, I witnessed the bloody and disastrous battle of Fredericksburg, and can never forget the experiences of that useless tragedy.  I was conscious of a sensation which struck me as too profound to be merely awe.  Early in the morning we crossed the Rappahannock on a pontoon bridge and marched up the hill to an open plain.  The roar of the battle was simply terrific, shading off from the sharp continuous thunder immediately about us to dull, heavy mutterings far to the right and left.  A few hundred yards before us, where the ground began to slope up to the fatal heights crowned with Confederate works and ordnance, were long lines of Union batteries.  From their iron mouths puffs of smoke issued incessantly, followed by tremendous reverberations.  Back of these batteries the ground was covered with men lying on their arms, that they might present a less obvious target.  Then a little further to the rear, on the level ground above the bluff, stood our cavalry.  Heavy guns on both sides of the river were sending their great shrieking shells back and forth over our heads, and we often “ducked” instinctively when the missile was at least forty feet above us.  Even our horses shuddered at the sound.