ADDRESS OF MR. PASCO, OF FLORIDA.


Mr. PRESIDENT: My acquaintance with WILLIAM HENRY FITZHUGH LEE commenced
in the summer of 1854, when we met at Cambridge as members of the new
freshman class at Harvard College. He was just then entering his
eighteenth year, was well grown for his age, tall, vigorous, and robust,
open and frank in his address, kind and genial in his manners. He
entered upon his college life with many advantages in his favor. The
name of Lee was already upon the rolls of the university, for other
representatives of different branches of the family had entered and
graduated in the years gone by and had left pleasant memories behind
them. His distinguished lineage made him a welcome guest in the older
families of the University city, and of Boston, its near neighbor, who
felt a just pride in the historic and traditional associations connected
with the earlier history of the country, and many of the influential
members of the class belonged to such families.

He was rather older than the average age of his classmates, and his life
had been spent amid surroundings that had enabled him to see a good deal
of society and the world, so that he brought with him into his college
life a more matured mind and a greater insight than the student usually
possesses at the threshold of his career. He had enjoyed excellent
advantages in preparing for the entering examinations, and was well
grounded in the languages as well as mathematics, so that he entered the
class well fitted for the course of study to be pursued. Thus, from the
first, he was prominent in the university, and soon became popular among
his classmates, and his prominence and popularity were maintained during
his stay among us.