The lad Benito had already won a reputation for honesty and enterprise when he went, an orphan boy, to Oaxaca, in 1818, to seek his fortune. He was then but twelve years old, modest and thoughtful beyond his years. His great desire was to obtain an education, as many of his own people had done at that time. He could neither read nor speak Spanish correctly. He soon found a place as a house-servant in the family of a teacher, and paid with his services for his board and schooling. In a year's time he had mastered Spanish and was studying Latin. His teacher, who had resolved to make a priest of young Juarez, put him in an ecclesiastical seminary near by.
On the threshold of his public life, Juarez caught a glimpse of the deep-rooted hatred of Rome for that which leads the people to think for themselves. In 1826 the State Legislature gave expression to its liberal principles by founding the Institute of Arts and Sciences of the State of Oaxaca. The fears of the priests were not groundless: the institute proved to be a focus of revolution and so-called heresy.
Miguel Mendez, a young friend of Juarez, was among the first to forsake the seminary for the broader field of thought and action opening at the institute. He too was a pure-blooded Indian, a youth whose fine talents and noble character were full of promise for his race and his country. A warm friendship which sprang up between the two young men no doubt influenced Juarez to abandon his studies for the priesthood. Mendez, however, was cut off in the morning of his days. His early death made an impression upon Juarez which was never effaced through those long and eventful years in which he was permitted to illustrate to the world the great possibilities
