The career of this singular personage had been as remarkable as his character. He was not a stranger to me. I had known him in 1849 or ‘50, when I accompanied my father on a visit to Richmond, and I still recall the striking appearance of the individual at that time. He had come, a poor boy of gentle birth, from the bleak hills of Stafford, to the city of Richmond, to seek his fortune, and, finding nothing better to do, had accepted the position of librarian to the Richmond library, waiting for something to “turn up,” and ready to grasp it. About the same time, that experienced journalist, the late B.M. De Witt, had founded the _Examiner_. He, no doubt, saw the eminent talents of the youth from Stafford, and the result had been an invitation to assist in the editorial department of the journal. Going to the Richmond library, to procure for my father some volume for reference, I had made the acquaintance of the youthful journalist. At the first glance, I felt that I was in the presence of an original character. His labors on the _Examiner_ had just commenced. He was seated, half-reclining, in an arm-chair, surrounded by “exchanges,” from which he clipped paragraphs, throwing the papers, as soon as he had done so, in a pile upon the floor. His black eyes, long black hair, brushed behind the ears, and thin, sallow cheeks, were not agreeable; but they made up a striking physiognomy. The black eyes glittered with a sullen fire; the thin lips were wreathed with a sardonic smile; and I was informed that the youth lived the life of a _solitaire_, voluntarily absenting himself from society, to give his days and nights to exhausting study. He read every thing, it was said--history, poetry, political economy, and theology. Swift was said to be his literary divinity, and Rabelais was at his elbow always. Poor, uneducated, ignorant of nearly every thing, he was educating himself for the future--sharpening, by attrition with the strongest minds in all literatures, ancient and modern, that trenchant weapon which afterward flashed its superb lightnings in the heated atmosphere of the great epoch in which he figured.