performance I do not know, but, inasmuch as he entered college in 1849, it must have been in his fourteenth or fifteenth year,—that is, in 1847 or 1848,—an early date, I fancy, for any one not professional, still more for so young a lad, to have been thus familiar with the subject in its infant days.
He entered The University of Pennsylvania in his sixteenth year,—his seventeenth year began in the following November. After passing his entrance examination, he sojourned during the summer with his family at Bethlehem, in this State; here, in a family also sojourning in the quaint old Moravian town, he met his 'fate' in Miss Rebecca H. Gilpin. From this boy-love at first sight he never after for an instant swerved, but remained the enamoured, loyal lover through boyhood, manhood, and through age. After their marriage, in January, 1856, forty-four full years of mutual devotion hallowed a union whereof the world affords only too few examples.
In the University his career was creditable from the start to the close. While not taking the highest rank, he was always among the best. For Latin and Greek he cared little, but to the Mathematics and Physics he devoted all his zeal. A friendship here begun between the young collegian and Professor John F. Frazer, and continued with ever-increasing closeness as years advanced, exerted an abiding and beneficial influence on the character of the younger man.
