The little man went up alone early one morning to meet his fate. He returned at night. "And did you enter?" we exclaimed. Very calmly he answered: "They were very kind to me at Princeton. I was examined at some length, and I shall enter the junior class."
When I packed his small trunk for his collegiate life, I found I had little to put into it—little more than my tears! His first report read, "In a class of eighty-three he stands first."
He maintained this standing for two years. The class included bearded men who had been prepared thoroughly in the best preparatory schools. Theo had received less than two years at Mr. Gordon McCabe's school. All the rest of his time he had given to study, alone, and unassisted.
A day came in Petersburg when he, perceiving the necessities of his family, had sold his beloved rifle for $40. Out of that sum he reserved for himself $2, and returned home with a work on advanced mathematics under his arm.
He was a perfect boy. If he ever thought wrongly, I cannot tell—I know he never did wrong. Personally, he was as beautiful as he was good—clear-eyed, serene, with a grand air. "For the future of one of my children," I was wont to say, "I have no fear. Theo will always be fortunate." It was said of him by President McCosh that he was "preternaturally gifted mentally." He always acquired knowledge with perfect ease. He studied and read whatever his father studied or read—politics, literature, and even military tactics. In the latter he was so proficient that when a little lad in linen blouses, the regiments at Smithfield would mount him on a stand and make him drill the companies.
Theodorick Bland Pryor.
At the end of his collegiate life he wrote: "The professors have been so good as to give me the first honor and also the mathematical scholarship." This scholarship required him to study at least one year in an English university. Accordingly, in the following autumn he was sent, through President McCosh's advice, to St. Peters, Cambridge University. He was just nineteen when he graduated.
He was too young and inexperienced to be a good manager, and soon perceived that his $1000 would not carry him through his year. A prize of a Cambridge scholarship and $40 was offered. He worked for it and won it—binding wet towels around his tired brain as he worked.