A young student of Jefferson, seventeen miles distant, who frequently spent his vacation at Pittsburg, assisted him in his difficult studies, as they occupied the same room. While studying together, they conceived the plan for benefiting other young men of like tastes by forming an association for their intellectual and moral improvement. It soon became popular, and the Theban Literary Society was afterwards formed. Judging from the names adopted by their officers, pedantic as they are, they evince an acquaintance with the rudiments of a polite education not expected from that class under their disadvantages, the names, relative to their offices, being taken from the Greek. This was but the small beginning for wider labors. Since then they have associated with other bodies, more important in their character, yet bearing a like relation to humanity. But it was, perhaps, to the literary society of Pittsburg, resembling that formed by Franklin and his young associates, that the germ of their usefulness first came forth. It was also about the winter of 1831-2 that the little ripple, destined to be the great anti-slavery wave, against which the ship of state would madly contend, was noticed; for, almost simultaneously with the outbreak for freedom at Southampton, Va., known as Nat Turner’s Insurrection, appeared “Garrison’s Thoughts on American Colonization.” Then, to the casual observer, the action of the one was a ridiculous folly; that of the other, the wild fancies of a fanatic’s brain. Now, there is a dark significance in that solitary figure, looming up in the dark background of slavery as an offering on the altar of freedom, in the home of Washington, preceded by that attempted at Charleston with Denmark Vesey at its head, followed by the closing scene at Harper’s Ferry. In each of these there was a warning and a lesson as direct as those which the Hebrew lawgiver received amidst the thunders of Sinai, but by which a slavery-blinded nation failed to profit, until the last great martyr of Ossowatomie was offered up. “When that great heart broke, ’twas a world that shook; From their slavish sleep a million awoke;” when Virginia, the cradle of slavery, became its burial-place, the Smithfield of freedom’s martyrs, and the battle-ground of a slave-founded Confederacy; while on the other side the “fanatic” stands a witness of the workings of the stupendous powers invoked. The writings of Mr. Garrison, and the Southampton insurrection, awakened much interest in many minds, which before that time were either absorbed in selfish speculations, and indifferent to the interest of the nation, or despondent of ameliorating the condition of the black race in this country.