Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 21.pdf/591

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The Green Bag And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwilling to school."

EX-GOV. JAMES B. GRANT of Denver, Col. Nephew and prot£g£ of Judge Grant and his partner in mining and smelting of King George II, after the Battle of Culloden. He settled at Norfolk, Va., but afterwards moved to North Caro lina and took up his residence at En field in Halifax County, where the family estate is still located. There was another James Grant, the father of the subject of this sketch, who was born and reared on that estate and had a numerous family, and then James Grant the third made his entrance upon the stage of life there on December 12, 1812. While it is peculiarly appro priate, as will presently appear, to bear in mind the seven stages, quoted so often from Shakspere, it does not behoove us to linger upon that phase of our subject's life which saw him an infant, "Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms, And then the whinning school boy with his satchel

It is well to observe, however, that he was a precocious child, and after a primary education at a country school where the classics were taught, he was prepared for the University at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at the early age of thirteen years. When he went down with his father, who also had attended the University, to matriculate, his entrance was frowned upon because he was so small and so young. Under the advice of the president of the University he was taken back home and put on the farm for outdoor exercise for two years. Then in 1828, at the age of fifteen, he returned to the University and gradu ated high up in the class of 1831. He was so advanced when he returned to the University after his vacation, that he was able to enter the sophomore class, and thus finished the curriculum before he was nineteen years of age. He was a most proficient student, ranking high in all things, but especially in mathe matics and the classical languages. After graduation he taught school about two years at Raleigh, the capital of the state, and while there he studied law, having decided upon a career at the bar. This brings him to twenty-one years of age, when we discover in him the first manifestation of that combination of intelligence and courage which made him the great man he became. Let us take a look at him and see what his physical appearance was at that time. Of small stature, being not over five feet eight inches in height, he had a frail and delicate body, which gave no promise of developing strength and ruggedness. Indeed, he was always a man of delicate health. He had, how ever, well-shaped limbs, and a head larger than the ordinary, which was