XV
A FASCINATING STORY
BY GENERAL LEW WALLACE
IN his study, a curiously-shaped building lighted from the top, and combining in equal portions the Byzantine, Romanesque and Doric styles of architecture, the gray-haired author of “Ben-Hur,” surrounded by his pictures, books, and military trophies, is spending, in serene and comfortable retirement, the evening of his life. As I sat beside him, the other day, and listened to the recital of his earlier struggles and later achievements, I could not help contrasting his dignified bearing, careful expression, and gentle demeanor, with another occasion in his life, when, as a vigorous, black-haired young military officer, in the spring of 1861, he appeared, with flashing eye and uplifted sword, at the head of his regiment, the gallant and historic Eleventh Indiana Volunteers.
General Wallace never repels a visitor, and his greeting is cordial and ingenuous.
“If I could say anything to stimulate or encourage the young men of to-day,” he said, “I would gladly do so, but I fear that the story of my early days would be of very little interest or value to others. So far as school education is concerned, it may be truthfully said that I had but little, if any; and if, in spite of that deficiency, I ever arrived at proficiency, I reached it, I presume, as Topsy attained her stature,—‘just growed into it.’”
A BOYHOOD OF WASTED OPPORTUNITIES
“Were you denied early school advantages?” I asked.
“Not in the least. On the contrary, I had most abundant opportunity in that respect.
“My father was a lawyer, enjoying a lucrative practice in Brookville, Indiana,—a small town which bears the distinction of having given to the world more prominent men than any other place in the Hoosier State. Not long after my birth, he was elected lieutenant-governor, and, finally, governor of the state. He, himself, was an educated man, having been graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, and having served as instructor in mathematics there. He was not only an educated man, but a man of advanced ideas generally, as shown by the fact that he failed of a re-election to congress in 1840, because, as a member of the committee on commerce, he gave the casting vote in favor of an appropriation to develop Morse’s magnetic telegraph.