He little dreamed upon that winter's night, when, in the small arena of a village debating-club, he stood up as the champion of the slave, that the day was not far distant when he would ride rowel-deep in carnage upon battle-fields which war's sad havoc had made sickening, fighting for the same cause in whose behalf he now so eloquently spoke.
No prophetic vision of what fate held in store for him appeared to the ardent boy, speaking for those who could not rise from the darkness of their bondage to speak for themselves. No glimpse of weary months dragged out in Confederate prisons—of hair-breadth escapes from dangers dread and manifold—of hiding in newly-dug graves made to assist the flight of the living, not to entomb the dead—of lying in jungles and cypress-swamps while fierce men and baffled hounds were panting for his blood—of vicissitudes and perils more like the wild creations of some fevered dream than the plain and unvarnished reality: nothing of all this came before him to trouble his young hopes or cloud his bright anticipations of the future.
He spoke of freedom, and had never seen a slave. He pictured the cruelty of the lash used in a Christian land on Christian woman, be she black or white. He spoke of the deeper wrong of tearing the new-born babe from its mother's breast to sell it by the pound—of dragging the woman herself from the father of her child and compelling her to mate with other men—of the fact that such wrongs were not alone the offspring of cruel hearts, nor of brutal owners, but arose from the mere operation of barbarous laws where masters, if left to themselves, would have been most kind. He spoke of such things as these, and yet he never dreamed that his words were but the precursors of deeds that would make mere words seem spiritless and tame.
Young Glazier spoke well. The little magnates of the place,—the older men, after this, talked of him as of one likely to rise, to become a man of note, and their manner grew more respectful towards the young school-master. His occupations and amusements at this period of his existence, though simple in their character, were considerably varied.
Among other entries in his journal about this date, is one that so commends itself by its brevity and comprehensiveness that I quote it verbatim.
"Having," he says, "received an invitation upon the twenty-fourth of December, I attended a party at the residence of Jeptha Clark, whose excellent wife received me very kindly; upon Christmas day I visited T. L. Turnbull's school at Fullerville; upon Monday last called at Mr. Austin's school in the Herrick District; Tuesday, dropped down for a moment upon the students at Gouverneur; on Wednesday, returned home; and on Thursday, for the greater part of the day, assisted uncle Joseph in hauling wood from the swamps on the Davis Place."
Thus the time slipped rapidly by and his first term of teaching drew to a close. In the spring of 1859 he again became a member of the Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary, and in May of that year, made the following characteristic entry in his diary:
"'Order is Heaven's first law.' A time and place for everything, and everything in its time and place, was the rule of conduct I adopted some time ago. In accordance with this determination I have laid out the following routine of occupation for each day. I intend to abide by it during the present term. I will retire at ten o'clock p. m., rise each morning at five o'clock, walk and exercise until six, then return to my room, breakfast and read history until eight, then repeat what the English call a 'constitutional,' viz.: another walk until prayers, devoting the time intervening between prayers and recitation, to Algebra. After recitation, I will study Geometry for three-quarters of an hour, Latin for half an hour, and be ready for recitation again at two o'clock. This will complete my regular course of study, and, by carrying out this routine, I can dine at noon, and also have a considerable amount of time for miscellaneous reading and writing, to say nothing of my Saturdays, upon which I can review the studies of the week."
To this plan young Glazier adhered conscientiously, and hence made rapid progress and very soon found himself in a condition to take another forward step in the pathway of learning. That step was the entrance to the State Normal School at Albany. To go to West Point and receive the military training which our government benevolently bestows upon her sons at that institution, had been his pet ambition for years—the scheme towards which all his energies were bent. But failing in this, his next choice was the Normal School. Accordingly, on a certain September afternoon in 1859, he found himself in the capital city of the Empire State, knocking for admission at the doors of the Normal School. He was alone and among strangers in a great city, with a purse containing the sum of eight dollars! For a course of seven or eight months instruction this was certainly a modest estimate of expenses! In fact, young Glazier had based his financial arrangements on a miscalculation of the amount furnished by the State. He did not then know that the only provision made by the body politic was for mileage, tuition and text-books. But on Monday morning, September seventeenth, 1859, he signed his name to the Normal pledge, and at the conclusion of the examination—which continued until September twenty-third—was assigned to the Junior Class—there being at that time four classes: the Senior and sub-Senior, Junior and sub-Junior.
The next step was to find lodgings at a weekly or monthly price more suited to his means than those which he had temporarily taken at the Adams House on his arrival there the previous evening. Always frugal in regard to his personal expenditures, he knew that, in order to eke out the full term with his scanty resources, he must carry his habitual thrift to its fullest extent. He therefore scoured the town for apartments, aided by references from Professor Cochran, principal of the Normal, and finally obtained a room on Lydius street, almost within shadow of the Cathedral, and at the certainly reasonable rate of "six shillings per week." This room he shared with Alexander S. Hunter, from Schoharie County, and a member of the sub-Senior Class. For several weeks the young students boarded at this place, buying what food they required, which the landlady cooked for them free of charge. Seventy-five cents a week paid for their cooking and rent!