Excerpt from An Address Delivered Before the Alumni Association of the College of New Jersey, June 23, 1863 IT was my lot a few years since, in the course of a summer excursion among the mountains, to cross a stream so near to its fountain-head, that the passage required no greater effort than simply to step from one bank to the other. The infant river was as yet but a brook. It so chanced that the stream and the traveller were journeying in the same direction, and not the least among the pleasures of the journey was the opportunity which it afforded to watch from day to day the gradual transformation of my fellow traveller; and when at length I had reached the broad savannas through which the majestic stream, now floating the commerce of many lands upon its surface, found its way into the sea, it was difficult to realize that the mighty river and the diminutive rivulet were one and the same. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.