Will you, who yet live, and were children when I was a child, turn back with me in memory to those days, and to those who were your school-fellows and playmates then? Do you remember who were the brave and generous, kind and truthful among them? and do you recall their after lives? Answer me; were not these the true men in that day? Do you remember William C. Dawson, Joseph H. Lumpkin, Lucius Q.C. Lamar, and his brother Mirabeau B. Lamar, Eugenius Nesbit, Walter T. Colquitt, and Eli S. Shorter? How varied in temperament, in character, in talent; and yet how like in the great leading features of the soul! Love for their country, love for their kind, love for the good was common to them all; unselfish beyond what was necessary to the wants of their families, generous in the outpourings of the soul, philanthropic, and full of charity. They hoarded no wealth, nor sought it as a means of power or promotion. Intent upon the general good, and content with an approving conscience and the general approbation, their lives were correct, and their services useful; and they live in the memory of a grateful people as public benefactors. There are others who rise to memory, who were at school with these, who were men with these, but they shall be nameless, who struggled, and successfully, to fill their coffers to repletion, and for nothing else; who have been courted by the mercenary, and flattered by the fawning sycophant; who, with their hoardings, have passed away, and no grateful memory remains of their lives; their hoards are dissipated, and they are only remembered to be despised. And yet others, who swam in the creek and sported on the play-ground with all of these, whose vicious propensities were apparent then--whose after lives were as their boyhood promised, a curse to society in evil deeds and evil example--have gone, too, unwept, unhonored, and luckily unhung.