William Lewis Manly

“You are old Father William,' the young man said, 'and your hair has become very white; and yet you incessantly stand on your head-do you think, at your age, it is right?””

“No institution of learning of 's day had courage enough to confer upon him an honorary degree; not only for his own intellectual accomplishments, but also for his influence upon the minds of the learned men and women of his time and generation. never received a prize for literature. The same prejudice and bigotry which prevented his getting an honorary college degree, militated against his being recognized as 'the greatest writer of the English language on the face of the earth,' as Henry Ward Beecher characterized him. Aye, . I say this fully conscious of my own admiration for that 'intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought.' was perfection himself. Every word was properly used. Every sentence was perfectly formed. Every noun, every verb and every object was in its proper place. Every punctuation mark, every comma, every semicolon, and every period was expertly placed to separate and balance each sentence.. Every thought came from his brain with all the beauty and perfection of the full blown rose, with the velvety petals delicately touching each other.Thoughts of diamonds and pearls, rubies and sapphires rolled off his tongue as if from an inexhaustible mine of precious stones.Just as the cut of the diamond reveals the splendor of its brilliance, so the words and construction of the sentences gave a charm and beauty and eloquence to 's thoughts. had everything: The song of the skylark; the tenderness of the dove; the hiss of the snake; the bite of the tiger; the strength of the lion; and perhaps more significant was the fact that he used each of these qualities and attributes, in their proper place, and at their proper time. He knew when to embrace with the tenderness of affection, and to resist and denounce wickedness and tyranny with that power of denunciation which he, and he alone, knew how to express.””

“You are old, Father William,' the young man said,'And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head --Do you think, at your age, it is right?''In my youth,' Father William replied to his son,'I feared it might injure the brain;But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,Why, I do it again and again.””