that unfortunate educator whose well-chosen plans were trampled under foot by the horses of Quiroga, Lopez, Rosas, and all the chiefs of the barbarous reaction movement,—summoned from each province six youths of known talents to be educated by the nation, in order that when their studies were concluded, they might return to their respective cities, to assume scientific professions and give lustre to their country. He asked that they should be from decent but poor families, and Don Ignacio Rodriguez came to my father to tell him that my name headed the list of chosen children whom the nation was about to take under its wing. But the covetousness of the rich interfered: lots were drawn; all the city went to the registering, and a list of candidates was made out, and the election was made by ballot. Fortune was not the patron of my family, and I was not one of the six favored ones. What a day of sadness to my parents was that on which the fatal notice came to them! My mother wept in silence! My father buried his face in his hands.
"But the fate that had been unjust to me, was not so to the province, although it knew not how to take advantage, in later days, of the riches that were in preparation for it. The lot fell to Antonio Aberastain, as poor a boy as myself, endowed with remarkable talents, an iron application to study, and a moral sentiment which has made him a shining example to this day. No one knows better than I the depths of his character: we were friends from infancy; I, his protegé in the adult school, when in 1836, we both arrived in San Juan, he from Buenos Ayres, I from Chili; he began to lend me the support of his influence, to raise me in his arms every time the malicious envy of the village overwhelmed me with a wave of disfavor or jealousy, every time that the leveller vulgarity persisted in reducing me to the common herd. Supreme Judge of Doctor Alzadas,
