feet of Judge Story (then of the Supreme Court) and Simon Greenleaf, who was scarcely less famous. What intellectual stimulus young Curry found in Cambridge and Boston, since Longfellow was one of the professors, Lowell an editor, Webster to be heard at Faneuil Hall, Theodore Parker at his church, and Charlotte Cushman and other great actors at the theater! One of his fellowstudents at Harvard was Rutherford B. Hayes, who, in 1876, became President of the United States. Mr. Curry received his B. L. in February, 1845. Upon his return home, he began to read law in the office of Mr. Samuel W. Rice, in Talladega, at the same time writing editorials for the Watchtower, visiting the ladies, attending a debating society, and going every Saturday night to his home only six miles away. But the sound of war gave pause to the study of the law, and Mr. Curry, with several others, set out for the scene of the war with Mexico, on their own account, in the Duane, a vessel so unseaworthy that shortly after they disembarked it sank in the harbor. In 1850 Mr. Curry undertook the management of a plantation, but soon found that he liked books better than directing farm labor. He was admitted to the bar, and so began an important period of his life.

Political life, however, rather than the practice of law, appealed to Mr. Curry. He was popular as a speaker. his youthful appearance and slight figure adding to this popularity. The burning question of the day was whether slavery should be allowed in the territories and its area extended. Mr. Curry took no uncertain stand. Perhaps his political convictions may be epitomized by saying that he was a disciple of John C. Calhoun. So deep were his convictions on the great doctrines of States' rights and local self-government that to the end of life they remained practically unchanged. In 1847 he was elected to the Alabama legislature. Again in 1853 and

in 1855 this honor was conferred upon him. His farming, alluded to above, seems to have filled in one of the intervals in his public career. In the legislature he always voted for measures that favored education, and he introduced a bill that led to a geological survey of the state. In 1855 he opposed with success the KnowNothing Party, carrying his county by 255 votes. In 1857 he was a Presidential elector on the Buchanan ticket, and in 1857 and 1859 was elected to Congress. It is interesting to look upon this young man as he appeared in Congress for the first time. "He was of splendid physique, with a cast of features and an expression of countenance so marked by manly ingenuousness and honor, yet indicative of conscious strength and selfreliance, that even his political enemies were conciliated and disposed to hear him with favor." Nor was he unknown as an orator and statesman. He had "a voice full, clear, and of wonderful compass. Quick in perception and accurate in discrimination; fluent, choice, and classic in his language; in manner, deliberate and selfpossessed, yet fervid and impassioned in his feelings and impulses, trained in the severe methods of the schools and especially equipped for the great duties that lay before him; loving the whole country, but his State and section with a warmth not far short of Eastern idolatry, he was full ready, we may easily believe, to spring at a bound into the very front rank as a champion of the South." He delivered his first speech February 23, 1858. The New York Tribune recognized him as "a powerful addition to the proslavery side of the House." He made a speech in which he opposed the granting of pensions, as involving a dangerous principle. Years afterward he wrote for the Religious Herald an article in which he showed the danger of creating a pauper class by careless charity, and the evil of giving public money to religious

denominations, but contended that the support of public schools was no violation of this law. In another speech he opposed the publication of the Congressional Globe as a wrong use of public money. He never lost an opportunity "to impress his convictions concerning political or moral righteousness and truth upon the minds of those with whom he came in contact." While in Congress he was faithful in his life as a Christian and a Baptist. At the age of 21 he had been baptized into the fellowship of the Lebanon Baptist Church, Coosa River Association, by Rev. Dr. Samuel Henderson. In Washington he was a regular attendant of the E Street Baptist Church; in Congress "he was punctual in attendance and alert and painstaking in his attention to the public matters which came before the House." His correspondence was heavy, and in those days Congressmen had no clerks.

When, in 1861, the Southern States seceded, Mr. Curry promptly withdrew from Congress and cast his lot with his State and his section of the country. On January 7, 1861, when the Alabama Convention met in Montgomery, he was on the platform. On January 11 the Convention adopted the ordinance of secession, and on January 21 he sent to the speaker of the House of Representatives the announcement of his withdrawal. He was a member of the provisional Confederate Congress that met in Montgomery, and of the first permanent Congress meeting in Richmond. His deep conviction that the War should go on led to his defeat at a subsequent election, when his opponent, in still-hunt, advocated peace. His loyalty to his State never faltered, and now, although military life did not appeal to him, he entered the army. Here he displayed courage and underwent hardship for his country. Once he left his wife, who was sick, to go to the battlefield; he never saw her again; the rumor that he had been killed is said to have

hastened her death. In various capacities, as cavalry officer, as aide to several leading generals, as commissioner under the Habeas Corpus Act, he served his country. He was brought into especially close touch with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, whom, as a disciplinarian and tactician, he believed was without a superior in the Confederate Army.

With the close of the War a distinctly new period began in Curry's life. In November, 1865, he was elected President of Howard College. The following January he was ordained to the gospel ministry, and in June, 1867, he was married to Miss Mary Wortham Thomas, of Richmond, Virginia, a daughter of James Thomas, Jr. After a struggle for several years to set Howard College well on its feet, a struggle carried on in the face of all of the horrors of the Reconstruction Period in the far South, Mr. Curry decided, for the sake of his family, consisting of his wife and Sue and Manly (children of his first wife), to leave Alabama and move to Richmond, Va. A little before his ordination he had preached what he called his first regular sermon, and later had helped Dr. J. J. D. Renfroe, who was his pastor and his bosom friend, in a protracted meeting. He loved to preach at times, he declared, but did not feel impelled to become a regular pastor, though by 1877 he had been invited to pastorates in Selma, Montgomery, Mobile, Atlanta, Augusta, Wilmington, Raleigh, New Orleans, Memphis, St. Louis, San Francisco, Louisville, Norfolk, Richmond, Baltimore, New York, Boston, and Brooklyn. Upon the reorganization of Richmond College, in 1866, Mr. Curry was invited to become its president. This position he declined, but in 1868 he accepted the Chair of English in that institution. Before his connection with Richmond College ceased he had filled, for a season, and in connection with his other work, the Chair of Philosophy and

that of Constitutional and International Law. It would be hard to speak too highly of Dr. Curry's work at Richmond College. He was most popular among the students, and his influence upon them as regards their study, their ideals, their lives, was inspirational, enlarging and uplifting in a most wonderful way. His college duties. by no means completed the sphere of his service to his denomination, the State, and the country. He was a leader among Virginia Baptists, taking an active part in the Memorial Campaign for the endowment of Richmond College, in 1873, and proving himself the champion of the great causes of education and foreign missions by his eloquent addresses at district associations and other gatherings all over the State. Before a great throng of people, on the campus of Richmond College, in June, 1873, he delivered a memorable address on the struggles of Virginia Baptists for religious liberty. The same year an address on much the same subject before the Evangelical Alliance of the World offended many, but was clear evidence of his willingness to proclaim and advocate the truth anywhere. Work awaited him in every direction, and it is scarcely possible to chronicle here all the varied forms of his energetic and versatile. service. He was the admirable moderator of the Virginia Baptist General Association for five years, and for twelve years the President of the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. Upon all manner of public occasions he was in demand for sermons, addresses, and speeches, his matchless oratory always thrilling the crowds. During the "Readjuster" fight in the seventies he strongly championed the payment of the debt, and in defense of this proposition delivered, upon the request of many leading citizens of Richmond, an address at Mozart Hall entitled "Law and Morals," and later discussed the issue of the day in various parts