They have been years of toil, for it takes time to transform a raw and ignorant country lad into a college president; but the toil has not harmed him--the poverty has not cramped him, nor crippled his energies.

"Poverty is very inconvenient," he said on one occasion, in speaking of those early years, "but it is a fine spur to activity, and may be made a rich blessing." The young man now had an assured income; not a large one, but Hiram was but an humble village.

No fashionable people lived there.

The people were plain in their tastes, and he could live as well as the best without difficulty.

He was employed in a way that interested and pleased him, and but one thing seemed wanting.