But to William Ward, the youngest son, attention must now be turned exclusively, with a glance first at the brief but important period of his life spent in his boyhood home. Of those early days which evidently left deep impression on his after life, less can be said than could be wished. The beauty of the country about Litchfield must have impressed him as it did Henry and Harriet Beecher, born amid the same surroundings, ten or twelve years before him. Like them, no doubt, he gazed with delight on the glorious sunsets which Mrs. Stowe so enthusiastically describes, and roamed in perhaps the same mood the woods in which they speculated whether Apollo had not there once built his altars. He, too, wandered along the banks of crystal Bantam River and dreamily watched the clouds as they hooded and un-hooded Mount Tom in the hazy distance. Nature there surely must have been "meet nurse for a poetic child." His scholastic education was completed under the tuition of a learned Episcopal clergyman whose private academy for boys was well patronized. He was an insatiable reader and a fairly good student, though his mind ran in literary lines rather than to the study of the exact sciences. The classics he must have especially preferred, and in them been carefully instructed, judging from the familiarity he manifests in his poems with the mythology and literature in general of Greece and Rome. Astronomy seems to have laid strong hold upon him; for it held high place in his esteem in later life. He early gave evidence of a poetic tendency, and some of his boyish effusions are said to have possessed considerable merit. Intuition, environment, and reading apparently combined to make of this New England lad a poet. What the experiences of active life contributed in this direction, a look ahead will show. When only sixteen years of age, a great and unexpected change in his plans and prospects occurred. He was urged by his brother Elias who had gone South and set up in business at Columbus, Mississippi, to come and learn under him the watch repairing and jewelry business. Though his tastes and aptitudes led in opposite direction, the opening seemed too favorable to be set aside. The invitation was accepted and bidding adieu forever to the home of his love, with mingled enthusiasm and trepidation the young man set out on his long journey to the South. Embarking at New York on a sailing vessel, he reached Mobile, Alabama, after a safe but lengthy voyage. Of the experiences of that voyage which afterward gave coloring to some of his most poetic lines and of the amusing incident attendant upon his arrival at Mobile notice cannot now be taken.