CHAPTER V.
A UNIVERSITY STUDENT.
That was a wonderful day for the boy Oliver when, with the farewells of his parents, brothers and sisters, friends and benefactors, ringing in his ears, he started to college. As the stage coach rushed across the corner of Fleming County, and plunged through Nicholas and wound its way among the bluegrass pasture lands of Bourbon, he felt that he was seeing the world, at last; and not only seeing the world, but had the means to take an honored place in it; for to this youth of sixteen, there seemed no honor greater than that of preaching the Gospel.
It was so plain to him, this plea of the disciples of Christ; it appeared so evidently the truth of the whole matter; he was anxious to tell others about it, imagining in his inexperienced zeal, that others would be as glad to hear as he had been. But before he could preach, the collegiate fortresses of wisdom must be stormed and captured. Head of his class in mathematics at the academy—that is the best we can say for him now, and souls are not won from sin and error by the demonstrations of Euclid.
Here we are in Fayette County, and the train stops at Lexington. Here Oliver pauses, but does not stop, for the University is wanting several years of reaching this point. We must hold on our course—down through Jessamine County to Mercer. And now indeed, our blood thrills as if needles were pricking our veins, for we are near our destination,—near Harrodsburg the goal of our boyhood's ambition.
There are other boys in the stage coach going to the University, and we talk about the history of that institution, and of its professors, and of what we will do when we stop at the station, and where we will go,—all strangers as we are, and all young, in this year, 1861.
Some one tells how Bacon College was established by the disciples of Christ in Georgetown twenty-five years ago, and how its first president was Walter Scott—a name sufficient to bring up May's Lick before Oliver's mind, with a far-away suggestion of homesickness.
And another tells (or should tell for the refreshing of the reader's memory) of ten years of college life under James Shannon, until Bacon College went to sleep, or underwent suspended animation, and had to be brought to Harrodsburg by J. B. Bowman, to try what a new climate and a new name could do for it. So Bacon College became Kentucky University in 1858—just three years ago.