Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. AS STUDENT AT UNIVERSITY.—BY KEMP P. BATTLE; LL. D. Vance Enters College and Takes a Special Course—His Appearance, Manner, Habits—Loves Fun But Loves Good Books—Studies Well —Wins the Good Opinion of the Students and Faculty—A Great Favorite with Gov. Swain and Doctor Mitchell—Witty Speeches, Quick Rejoinders, Anecdotes, Incidents, Puns, Bon Mots—Mock Trial—Moot Court—His Parting Remarks, Etc. MONO the inhabitants of the lands east of the Blue Ridge, I claim to be the first discoverer of Zebulon Baird Vance. In the summer of 1848 I visited Asheville in company with my father, who, as Superior Court Judge, was holding a special term for the County of Buncombe. The old court house had been burned. Timbers had been hauled for the erection of a more handsome structure. I was sitting on these timbers in the soft radiance of a full moon light, talking to a young lawyer who had a brain by nature large enough to have placed him among the mountain giants, Newton Coleman. He called to a young man passing by and introduced him to me as Zeb Vance. My new acquaintance impressed me at once as a youth of peculiar attractiveness of manner and gifts of mind. I thought I knew something of Shakspere, but his familiarity with the characters and words of the Titan poet put me to shame. I claimed to be in a measure intimate with the personages of the romances of my favorite, Scott, but he had evidently lived with them as with home-folks. I had been from childhood, not always a willing, but certainly a regular attendant on Sunday school and church services, and I thought I had at least an amateur familiarity with the Bible, but his mind seemed to be stored with Scriptural texts as fully as a theological student preparing for hisexamination. Candor compels me to admit, however, tha...