In the summer term of his sophomore year Willis was again suspended for a few weeks, this time in common with a majority of his class and in consequence of what was known as “the Conic Sections Rebellion.” The class had been assured by the tutors that they would not have to learn the corollaries to the propositions in that branch of mathematics, and when the objectionable corollaries were, notwithstanding, imposed upon them, the mercury then standing at 90° and the annual examinations at hand, eighty-four members bound themselves by a solemn pledge not to recite them. The government were firm, and the recalcitrant sophomores were suspended in platoons, day after day. Horace Bushnell was a ring-leader in this revolt, which included the “professors” equally with the worldly. All the suspended men were taken back at the end of the term. In some recollections of Willis by his classmate, Hugh Blair Grigsby, published in the latter’s journal, the “Norfolk Beacon,” in the autumn of 1834, he says:-- “The first notice that the public had of his budding genius was a little poem in six verses, the two first lines of the first verse being,-- ‘The leaf floats by upon the stream Unheeded in its silent way,’ We cannot recall the whole stanza; but our fair readers may remember that their albums contained, some time since, a beautiful vignette representing a lady resting in her bower, listening to the notes of a pretty songster perched above her. This engraving was taken from these lines in this poem:-- ‘The bird that sings in lady’s bower, To-morrow will she think of him?’”