In the midst of his inexpressible delight in the freedom the college course gave him to indulge his fondness for literature and to spend his days and nights walking and talking with his mates, he continued to remember his family with affection, and did not neglect to write home. On March 25, 1821, he wrote his mother: "I am sure that it is well worth while being sick to be nursed by a mother. There is nothing which I remember with such pleasure as the time when you nursed me at Aspenden. The other night, when I lay on my sofa very ill and hypochondriac, I was told that you were come! How well I remember with what an ecstasy of joy I saw that face approaching me, in the middle of people that did not care if I died that night, except for the trouble of burying me! The sound of your voice, the touch of your hand, are present to me now, and will be, I trust in God, to my last hour."[5] On the first of October, 1824, two years after he had received the degree of Bachelor of Arts, he wrote his father that he was that morning elected Fellow, and that the position would make him almost independent financially for the next seven years. In 1824, too, he made his first address before a public assembly,--an antislavery address that probably gave Zachary Macaulay the happiest half hour of his life, that called out a "whirlwind of cheers" from the audience, and enthusiastic commendation from the _Edinburgh Review_. The next year Macaulay was asked to write for that famous periodical, then at the height of its political, social, and literary power. He contributed the essay on Milton and "like Lord Byron he awoke one morning and found himself famous." The compliment for which he cared most--"the only commendation of his literary talent which even in the innermost domestic circle he was ever known to repeat"--came from Jeffrey, the editor, when he acknowledged the receipt of the manuscript: "The more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that style." When Macaulay entered college, his father considered himself worth at least a hundred thousand pounds; but soon afterward he lost his money and the eldest son found the other children looking to him for guidance and support. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he drew freely on his income from the fellowship and his occasional contributions to the _Edinburgh_. He was the sunshine of the home, and apparently only those who knew him there got the best of his brilliancy and wit.