200 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS consciously absorbing the ability to do the same things. Wilson s decision as to his life purpose was formed suddenly. He had spent a year at David son College, North Carolina, an excellent institu tion with a strong faculty, and then a year at his new home in Wilmington, North Carolina, whither his father had been called from Columbia to the Presbyterian pastorate. In the early fall of 1875 he entered Princeton, then under the presidency of Doctor James McCosh. About three months had passed when young Wilson, while browsing in the library, took down a file of the Gentlemen s Magazine and turned to the series of articles en titled "Men and Manners in Parliament," written by "The Member for Chiltern Hundreds," the anonymous successor of Doctor Johnson. Wilson was captivated by these vivid reports of the parlia mentary debates participated in by Gladstone, Disraeli, John Bright, Earl Granville, Sir William Vernon Harcourt and other figures in the public eye of England at that time. He eagerly devoured the entire series, and went on to the earnest study of English political history. He does not hesitate to confess that this was a turning point in his life and that no other circumstance did so much to make public life the purpose of his existence. In his senior year, Wilson embodied his conclusions in an article entitled "Cabinet Government in the United
