During my stay here, many friends extended invitations to visit them, but I was able to accept very few. Among those whom I met was my old comrade, Captain Charles G. Hampton, who was at the Russell House to greet me when I arrived. No one could have been more welcome. Captain Hampton and I began our somewhat peculiar acquaintance as classmates in the State Normal College at Albany, New York, in the spring of 1861, where we joined a military organization known later as the "Normal Company" of the "Ellsworth Avengers"--Forty-fourth New York Infantry--whose members were put through a course of drills in anticipation of future necessity, our voluntary drill masters being Professors Rodney G. Kimball and Albert N. Husted. It was argued by the principal and by the faculty generally, that while young men were learning how to teach the schools of the State, it would be well also for them to be prepared to defend the flag of the State. We had just closed our term when President Lincoln issued his call for seventy-five thousand volunteers, and as it was not at this time the apparent intent of the Normal Company to enter the service as a body, we decided to enlist in some other organization. Hampton went to Rochester where he joined the Eighth New York Cavalry, while I enlisted in the Second New York-Harris Light Cavalry, at Troy. We did not meet again until November, 1863--when, by the fortune of war, we both became inmates of Libby Prison. The circumstances that brought us there were, on his side, wounds and capture in an action with guerrillas under Mosby; on mine, capture in a cavalry battle near New Baltimore, Virginia, during Lee's retreat from the field of Gettysburg.