From boy to man.--The Lyceum debate.--Willard speaks for the slave.--Entrance to the State Normal School.--Reverses.--Fighting the world again.--Assistance from fair hands.--Willard meets Allen Barringer.--John Brown, and what Willard thought of him.--Principles above bribe.--Examination.--A sleepless night.--Haunted by the "ghost of possible defeat."--"Here is your certificate."--The school at Schodack Centre.--At the "Normal" again.--The Edwards School.--Thirty pupils at two dollars each.--The "soldier school-master."--Teaches at East Schodack.--The runaway ride.--Good-by mittens, robes and whip!--Close of school at East Schodack. Although a very boy in years, young Glazier felt himself already stepping upon the boundary line of manhood and, luckily for his future welfare, comprehended the manifold dangers and mentally realized the responsibilities which attend that phase of human existence. Upon the fifth of February, 1857, the dull routine of a teacher's duty was varied by a visit made to Edwards by Willard's uncle Joseph, and his sisters; and, after closing his school, the former went home with his visitors, and thence to a Lyceum which had been established in the Herrick School District, where a debate was in progress as to the relative importance, in a humanitarian point of view, of the bondage of the African race in the Southern States, or the decadence of the Indian tribes under the encroachments of the Whites. The "question" assumed that the Aborigines were most worthy of sympathy; and young Glazier, being invited to participate in the discussion, accepted, and spoke upon the negative side of the question. [Illustration: Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary.] He little dreamed upon that winter's night, when, in the small arena of a village debating-club, he stood up as the champion of the slave, that the day was not far distant when he would ride rowel-deep in carnage upon battle-fields which war's sad havoc had made sickening, fighting for the same cause in whose behalf he now so eloquently spoke. No prophetic vision of what fate held in store for him appeared to the ardent boy, speaking for those who could not rise from the darkness of their bondage to speak for themselves. No glimpse of weary months dragged out in Confederate prisons--of hair-breadth escapes from dangers dread and manifold--of hiding in newly-dug graves made to assist the flight of the living, not to entomb the dead--of lying in jungles and cypress-swamps while fierce men and baffled hounds were panting for his blood--of vicissitudes and perils more like the wild creations of some fevered dream than the plain and unvarnished reality: nothing of all this came before him to trouble his young hopes or cloud his bright anticipations of the future.