University of Virginia Library

2. THE SECOND DAY

The exercises of the second day of the Centennial consisted of the
presentation of greetings by delegates from other institutions, the
dedication of a tablet memorial to alumni who died in the World War,
a reception to delegates and other guests at the President's House,
and the acting of the Pageant in the Amphitheatre. The program
of events on this day follows, with the text of all the formal addresses
except those by the Governor of Virginia and the President of the
University of Missouri, the manuscripts of which were not furnished
the committee by the speakers. The complete text of the Centennial
Pageant is included. The greetings from a few universities and
scientific societies are printed or reproduced in facsimile, and the
official list of delegates actually present is added.

Wednesday, June 1st

 

11.00 A.M.

Reception of Delegates and Presentation of Greetings from Institutions. Cabell Hall

The Order of the Procession, Wednesday Morning

BAND

I

DELEGATES FROM INSTITUTIONS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES

DELEGATES FROM INSTITUTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

II

THE PROFESSORS OF THE UNIVERSITY IN REVERSE ORDER
OF OFFICIAL SENIORITY
FORMER PROFESSORS OF THE UNIVERSITY

III

THE ALUMNI TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
ENDOWMENT FUND
THE TRUSTEES OF THE MILLER FUND
THE VISITORS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
FORMER VISITORS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
FORMER RECTORS OF THE UNIVERSITY
THE RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY
THE GOVERNOR'S MILITARY STAFF
THE GOVERNOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY

The Order of Exercises: Cabell Hall

THE HERALD

               

Address of Welcome:	The Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Honorable Westmoreland Davis, '85, LL.B.
Address of Welcome:	The President of the University of Virginia, Edwin Anderson Alderman, D.C.L., LL.D.
Response:	The President of the College of William and Mary, Julian Alvin Carroll Chandler, Ph.D., LL.D.
Response:	The President of the University of Missouri, Albert Ross Hill, Ph.D., LL.D.
Response:	The President of Harvard University, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, LL.B., LL.D.
Response:	His Excellency the French Ambassador, Jules Jusserand, LL.D.
Largo from Serse (Handel)	Mrs. Charles Hancock at the Organ
Presentation of Greetings, by the Delegates, from Institutions Represented

Recession

 

3.00 P.M.

Ceremonies by the Alumni of the University of Virginia who served in the World War, in dedication of a Tablet memorial to their comrades who died in Service. South Front of the Rotunda

Master of Ceremonies
Lieutenant-Colonel John Abram Cutchins, '03

           

Invocation:	Chaplain Beverley Dandridge Tucker, Jr., '02
Presentation:	Captain Alfred Dickinson Barksdale, '15
Unveiling:	Miss Bobbie Conrad, daughter of Captain Robert Young Conrad, '10, who was killed in action, France, October 12, 1918
	Miss Sallie Merrick Kite, daughter of Sergeant Charles Clement Kite, '07, who was killed at ChâteauThierry, June 26, 1918
Acceptance:	John Stewart Bryan, '95, Rector of the University of Virginia
Address:	Gabriel Hanotaux, Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur

   

5 to 6 P.M.	Reception to Delegates and Invited Guests by President and Mrs. Alderman. The President's House
8.30 P.M.	"The Shadow of the Builder." A Pageant presented in the Amphitheatre

ADDRESSES ON THE SECOND DAY

ADDRESS OF WELCOME TO THE UNIVERSITY

By President Alderman

Governor Davis has welcomed you to the Commonwealth of Virginia.
I shall not seek or hope to add to the graciousness of that welcome, but I
may venture to focus its friendliness upon this particular spot in the Commonwealth—this

University which here to-day inaugurates this celebration
of remembrance and hope in commemoration of the One Hundredth Anniversary
of its birth, and which I take leave to describe as the highest intellectual
achievement of an old and distinguished American state. It was
founded by a lover of human freedom whose political philosophy was based
upon absolute faith in the ultimate wisdom and integrity of trained men.
Guided by sincere scholars who held that faith in their thinking and lived it
in their lives, stamped with opulent beauty of form and girt about with fair
landscapes and encircling hills, it has been at work during one century, distinguished
above all other centuries, perhaps, for its fruitful pursuit of
justice in society and truth in science. In peace and in war, amid all the
vicissitudes that beset free men threading their way to higher destinies, here
it has stood a steadfast thing of force and dignity striving to augment the
forces of nature and to ally them to the uses of mankind, to mix beauty with
strength in the framework of democracy, and to establish in the life of the
great republican experiment enduring standards of personal integrity and
public virtue. What contributions it has precisely made to American civilization
belong to the educational history of the nation, and these have been
recently set forth with sympathetic skill and faithful accuracy by a distinguished
son of this University. We have yielded to this very human
impulse, characteristic of institutions as well as of men, to mark a milestone
in an endless career, not primarily to recite the glories of the past but to
envisage the responsibilities of the future. We recognize in this air the
ethical binding force of that reverence for the past without which there can
be no true continuity in human institutions. We believe indeed that all
healthy growth somehow proceeds out of the tissues of ancient strength,
but our enthusiasm is for the future and our vision is a vision of potential
youth of this and other ages pressing forward to carry on the work of an ever
better world.

In behalf of the Governing Bodies and Faculties of the University of
Virginia, I, therefore, welcome you to this birthday festival: Delegates of Universities
and Colleges, representatives of Learned Societies and Foundations
in this and other lands, guests of the University, and in a way of peculiar
affection, sons of this mature and vigorous mother, those whom the years
have whitened, those who bear the work of the world in the middle period,
and these young scions who climb about the knees of Alma Mater in love
and gaiety. I am aware that thousands of miles and centuries separate
you in space and time. Institutions are represented here to-day which were
venerable when our continent lay unknown in these western seas, while
others have sprung into life in answer to the cry of democratic need in the
last decade; but, nevertheless, it is as a homogeneous family that I welcome
you—a brotherhood of cultural force and endeavor, a fellowship of scholars,

blood kin in intellect and purpose, holding the promise of the future as they
have yielded the fruit of the past. Whatever we have to offer of personal
affection and esteem, of historic significance, of memories of old eager
teachers who showed to by-gone generations "the high, white star of truth,"
of present hope and intent, is yours, my colleagues.

We who now serve these Virginia altars are heartened by your presence
and sympathy, enlightened by your counsel and stimulated by your example.
Standing upon the lintels of a new age, the University of Virginia is as of
old still glad to learn and glad to teach. Like Ajax praying for light to see
his foeman's face on the darkness of the Trojan plain, we humbly ask
Almighty God for strength and opportunity to face whatever is before us
with enlightened minds, organized wills, and uplifted hearts.

RESPONSE BY PRESIDENT CHANDLER OF THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY

We are deeply grateful to His Excellency, the Governor of Virginia, and
to the President of this University for their eloquent words of welcome. We
thank them sincerely for giving us the opportunity to be present at this
renowned institution as participants in this history-making celebration. On
this centennial occasion it is a privilege to speak for the colleges of Virginia.
We rejoice that our University, through a hundred years of activity, has
contributed so much to the educational development of the State, and has
furnished so many leaders to Virginia and the United States. We are deeply
grateful that its centenary does not mark old age and a decline, but a ripening
into vigorous youth, giving promise of a period of more useful activity
and of wise promotion of education in many fields. No words of mine can
depict the deep sense of pride that we have in this institution.

On such an occasion one can but think of educational conditions before
the founding of the University. At the opening of the Revolution there was
but one institution of higher learning in Virginia, the College of William and
Mary, then nearly one hundred years old. But with the Declaration of
Independence, an impetus was given to higher learning, for it was generally
thought that in a Republic all men participating in its affairs should be
trained for the performance of their rights as citizens. The further desire to
prepare men for service to the church and to society in general, resulted in
the beginnings of Hampden-Sidney in Prince Edward County, and Liberty
Hall at Lexington, later Washington College, and still later Washington
and Lee University. These three institutions, William and Mary, Hampden-Sidney,
and Washington and Lee are the only Virginia institutions of college
grade antedating the University of Virginia.

George Washington had dreams of a national university, and in his will

he bequeathed fifty shares of stock in the Potomac Company for the endowment
of a university to be established within the District of Columbia. To
Washington College, he likewise made a gift of stock with the hope that at
Lexington would be maintained an institution which would prepare young
men for the national university. Washington's idea of a university was a
national school of politics and administration. According to Herbert B.
Adams, "It was an idea born of the old College of William and Mary, where
capitol and college faced each other, and where the statesmen of Virginia had
been trained for their great work of liberating the colonies and of framing the
Federal Constitution. The idea of a national university grew in Washington's
mind with his own official connection as Chancellor of William and
Mary."

Before Washington became an advocate of a national university,
another great Virginian was urging the establishment of a university for his
own State, "although there was nothing provincial in his advocacy." He
conceived of a university separated from politics and located in a small town
where young men would not be subjected to many temptations—an institution
around which there would cling something of a monastic spirit—a
university bearing marks of an educational system found at Geneva and at
Oxford and Cambridge. This great Virginian was Thomas Jefferson, who is
justly entitled to be called the "father of the University of Virginia."

This University, to quote again Herbert B. Adams, "is clearly the
lengthened shadow of one man. But William and Mary College was the
Alma Mater of Thomas Jefferson. There at Williamsburg, in intimate
association with a Scotch professor of mathematics and philosophy, with a
scholarly lawyer (George Wythe) and with the Governor of the Colony,
Thomas Jefferson received his first bent towards science and higher education,
towards law and politics—the fields in which he afterwards excelled.
Jefferson's first idea of a university for Virginia is inseparably connected
with his proposed transformation of William and Mary College, of which, as
Governor of the State, he became ex officio a visitor in 1779."

I wish it were possible at this time to review the full significance of the
year 1779 in the educational history of America. Speaking briefly, in this
year, the College of William and Mary took the name of university, established
the honor and elective systems, introduced the teaching of modern
languages, and established a school of law and a school of medicine. These
steps in American education, introduced through the influence of Jefferson
and the two Madisons, have revolutionized higher education in America.
However, Jefferson's bill of 1779, in favor of transforming William and
Mary into the University of Virginia, failed of passage because William and
Mary had been the college of the established church and the various denominations
represented in the Virginia Legislature would not vote public

money for such an "establishment, however noble and worthy. Non-sectarianism
was one of the deepest foundations in the political establishment of
higher education in Virginia." It was much easier, therefore, for Mr. Jefferson
and his friends to establish a new institution.

In a letter of 1814 to Peter Carr, President of the Board of Trustees of
Albemarle Academy, Jefferson wrote: "I have long entertained the hope
that this, our native State, would take up the subject of education, and
make an establishment, either with or without incorporation, into that of
William and Mary, where every branch of science deemed useful at this date
should be taught in its highest degree." In this letter Mr. Jefferson outlines
a plan for the elementary schools preparatory to the "general" schools,
which in turn should prepare for the professional schools, incorporated in
the university.

In 1817 a bill barely failed in the General Assembly to establish a complete
system of primary schools, academies, colleges, and a university. This
bill proposed that the trustees or visitors of the then existing colleges of
William and Mary, Hampden-Sidney, and Washington should be invited
to become a part of this system.

Jefferson's conception of a University of Virginia was a place where all
branches of useful sciences could be taught and where men could be trained
for the professions. He said: "To these professional schools will come the
lawyer to the school of law; the ecclesiastic to that of theology and ecclesiastical
history; the physician to those of the practice of medicine, materia
medica, pharmacy, and surgery; the military man to that of military and
naval architecture and projectiles; the agricultor to that of rural economy;
the gentleman, the architect, the pleasure gardener, the painter, and the
musician to the school of fine arts." He also favored a school of technical
philosophy and said: "To such a school will come the mariner, carpenter,
shipwright, pump-maker, clock-maker, mechanist, optician, metallurgist,
founder, cutler, druggist, brewer, vintner, distiller, dyer, painter, bleacher,
soap-maker, tanner, powder-maker, salt-maker, glass-maker, to learn as
much as shall be necessary to pursue their art understandingly, of the
sciences of geometry, mechanics, statics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, hydrodynamics,
navigation, astronomy, geography, optics, pneumatics, acoustics,
physics, chemistry, natural history, botany, mineralogy, and
pharmacy."

It was not intended that this university should be a school of aristocracy
but a seminary of learning to which men preparing for all professions or
vocations would come. The marvel is the vision of the great master mind.
Founded on so broad a conception, the University may be expanded as the
needs of the people demand and as our civilization changes.

Speaking for my own college and the other Virginia institutions of

higher learning—state, private, and denominational—we exult in the
original conception of the founder of this University, a conception looking to
instruction in all fields of useful knowledge, and we pledge to the University
our assistance in the promotion of education for the State.

The raison d'être of a State university was well expressed by President
Burton in his inaugural address when he said, "The function of the State
university is to serve the State and through the State to serve the nation and
the world." Through the hundred years of its life the University of Virginia
has clearly demonstrated that this ideal is the goal of its ambition.
Its usefulness is being expanded daily by its recognition that much of
college work in the State should be done by institutions already chartered
and giving standard degrees. This does not mean that the University should
discontinue its college work but should insist, as it does, upon higher standards
both for entrance and graduation. The sister institutions are further
gratified that the University is holding firmly to Jefferson's desire to establish
a correlation between the University and colleges of such a character
that the colleges will become "feeders" to the University. This ideal is
vital to all, but it calls for strenuous efforts to develop extensively the graduate
departments of the University. The growth of the University is of
paramount importance to the State and such plans as look to the expansion
of the schools of engineering, education, business administration,
law, and medicine; to the establishment of a bureau or bureaus of investigation
and research, and to extension courses within reach of the people in
various parts of the State, are gratifying evidences of the broadening influence
of this institution of which we are so justly proud. We know that
all these movements demand large expenditures for equipment and for personnel,
but we believe that the people of Virginia are ready to be taxed for
all progressive proposals on the part of its University.

Mr. President, coming from an institution that is the Alma Mater of
the founder of the University, and speaking for it, speaking for Washington
and Lee University which owes, to a certain extent, its development to the
gift from the great Washington, speaking for the ancient college of Hampden-Sidney
and for the State institutions and the other institutions of higher
learning, which have been established since the University of Virginia, I
bring on this joyful anniversary greetings and expressions of grateful appreciation
of the wonderful influence upon learning that this institution has
exerted in the State and nation. We realize that this University has in
many ways ministered faithfully to the educational needs of our State and
country. We appreciate the high ideals that you and the Board of Visitors
have for this institution. We delight in its growth and expansion. We
rejoice in the prospects for an increase in its endowment and facilities. On
this Centennial anniversary we declare to you our readiness to coöperate

(From left to right) President Chandler, of the College of William and Mary; Ambassador Jusserand; President Lowell, of Harvard
University; President Hill, of the University of Missouri; Rector Bryan, of the University of Virginia

with you in your ambitions and in the superb efforts that are being made to
promote culture and to prepare men and women for leadership in the State,
the nation, and the world. We are yours to command for the accomplishment
of the cherished purposes for which this University was established,
for in those purposes we have an abiding faith.

RESPONSE BY PRESIDENT LOWELL OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

It is a privilege to speak for the endowed universities of this country
at the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the University of
Virginia, founded by the philosopher-statesman, and architect as well.
Here he lived during the struggle for independence, whereof he wrote the
charter; and here he returned after his labors for the new-born nation, in
France, as Secretary of State and as President. In his later years of well-earned
repose he lit here a beacon to diffuse the light of learning he held
needful for the people he had served so long.

The examples of such far-sighted men as he, have been followed, until
to-day, a host of lights are shining over our whole country from shore to
shore. The oceans that guard our land are the only things upon the planet
that man does not, and cannot, change—symbols of eternity, eternally in
movement and eternally at rest. In this they typify the human spirit, unchangeable
yet ever changing; and the universities, which embody that
spirit in its most refined and keenest form, should ever be centers both of
continual movement and of rest.

Bound together in a common cause, quickened by a common aim,
faithful to a noble trust, our universities and colleges are constantly calling
with their bells throughout this broad land—calling to one another to serve
the needs of the present time, and to prepare the way for generations yet to
come.

Your bells have called, and we, representatives of the great brotherhood
of scholars, have come to pay our tribute of respect to this university, venerable
in years, but ever young;—more vigorous and more youthful as the
years roll on. We come to tell you of our faith that, large as have been her
services in the century that is past, the University of Virginia, in the century
that lies before us, will be greater in works, in influence and in renown.

RESPONSE ON BEHALF OF FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES BY HIS EXCELLENCY JULES
JUSSERAND, FRENCH AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES

I am most happy that it is my privilege to answer on this auspicious day
and to offer congratulations, on behalf of foreign institutions, among which
are those of France.

The French feeling for the founder of the University of Virginia was of
the warmest. Jefferson had studied our philosophers, spoke our language
and spent five years among us as the diplomatic representative of the newborn
American Republic. The sympathy was reciprocal. "I do love this
people with all my heart," he wrote from Paris to Mrs. John Adams in 1785.
The early prospects of our own Revolution filled him with joy, and he took
pleasure later in recalling those feelings, when the first guest from abroad,
Lafayette, was received by your University, and dined in your hall, with
Jefferson and Madison in 1824. In the letter pressing him to visit what he
calls "our academical village," Jefferson reminded this early friend of
America of the far-off time, when, one evening they, with some "other
patriots, settled in my house in Paris the outlines of the constitution you
wished."

Secretary of State, he saluted the birth of our first Republic in the
warmest terms, assuring us that the citizens of the United States considered
"the union of principles and pursuits between our two countries as a link
which binds still closer their interests and affection." This union of principles
and affections, after half a century of republican institutions in
France, is closer now than ever before, as was evidenced, not by words, but
by momentous deeds in the recent glorious past.

When the longing for independence had been fulfilled in this country,
the longing for the spread of knowledge became preponderant among the
leaders of the nation. I wish, Jefferson said, our people would "possess information
enough to perceive the important truth that knowledge is power,
that knowledge is safety, that knowledge is happiness." An immense country
with untold possibilities was to be developed; and two conditions for
success were indispensable: on the one hand, the pluck, energy, clever understanding
of fearless pioneers; on the other, knowledge. The nation had the
first, not the second; it realized, however, its lack and its chiefs resolved
that the gap should be filled.

Peace was not yet signed, and Independence, just won, had not been
consecrated, when, as early as 1782, "the President and Professors of the
University of William and Mary," that famous institution where both
Washington and Jefferson had studied, the honored mother of the most
famous of the literary societies, the Phi Beta Kappa, sent to Rochambeau,
still in America, an address couched, they said, "not in the prostituted
language of fashionable flattery, but with the voice of truth and republican
sincerity," saying: "Among the many substantial advantages which this
country hath already derived and which must ever continue to flow from its
connection with France, we are persuaded that the improvement of useful
knowledge will not be the least. A number of distinguished characters in
your army afford us the happiest presage that science as well as liberty will

The French Ambassador, Dr. Henry van Dyke, and Other Notables

acquire vigor from the fostering hand of your nation. . . . You have
reaped the noblest laurel that victory can bestow, and it is perhaps not an
inferior triumph to have obtained the sincere affection of a grateful people."
It was a fact that in Rochambeau's army one general was a member of the
French Academy, Chastellux, chief of staff, a great friend of Jefferson, and
that Rochambeau himself was able to use Latin in order to talk with learned
men in America ignorant of French. This Virginian suggestion was the
beginning of an intercourse which has expanded considerably since, to the
advantage of America, of France and of other countries.

For the solution of the problem and the spread of knowledge in the
United States, the two leaders, happened to be the chiefs of the two political
parties, federalists and antifederalists, unanimous however on this question,
both twice presidents of the United States; both sons of Virginia, George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The two had dreamt a dream that
was not to be fulfilled in the way they had imagined. They wanted a National
University, ranking above all others, and giving only instruction of
the highest order. Washington bequeathed to the institution that was, he
thought, to reach one day that rank, the shares of the Potomac and the
James River companies which he had received as a gift from his native State
and which he never intended to apply to his own uses. Jefferson, when
President, proposed to Congress in his sixth annual message the resumption
of the same plan, and as subsidies would be expected from every State he
recommended the vote of an appropriate amendment to the Constitution.

The National University was not to be, but the University of Virginia
was to be and now is, greatly improved, increased and invigorated. With
what love and devotion he fostered it, all know. It was his last great service
to his country, one of the only three he allowed to be mentioned on his tombstone,
where he is described as the "father" of this same University. He
had indeed for her a fatherly love; describing it as "the last of my mortal
cares," paying attention to every matter of importance and also to every
detail; anxious about the selection of professors, the attendance of pupils
and the style of architecture. Abroad, he wrote with pride "they have immensely
larger and more costly masses but nothing handsomer or in chaster
style." Professors were sometimes in those far-off days the cause of
trouble; he complains of some who teach Latin and pronounce it in such a
way that you do not know whether they are not speaking Cherokee or
Iroquois. Students too have their faults, or had in those times, but all told,
the undertaking is a success, and with pride again he could write "A finer
set of youths I never saw assembled for instruction."

We feel confident that if he were to appear suddenly among us to-day,
and have a look at the successors of those he knew, he would use the very
same words.

He conceived, even from the first, that, although for certain branches of
learning, he had to depend on professors from abroad, yet American universities
could even then be of use to European youths. In 1822 he wrote to a
friend of his who was American minister in Lisbon that the young people from
over there might come with profit, and get "familiarized with the habits and
practice of self-government. This lesson is scarcely to be acquired but in this
country, and yet, without it, the political vessel is all sail and no ballast."

This was indeed the lesson that without the need of any university, it is
true, or of any teaching other than those of events and examples, all those
enthusiastic young men who had come from France to fight for American
independence took home with them. At the time of our Revolution they
were foremost in asking for equality and for the abolition of privileges,
Lafayette, first among them and Rochambeau with him, Marquis and
Count though they were.

Now the fight for knowledge is won. While continuing to learn,
America can also teach; she is one of the nations in the vanguard of civilization
as regards learning and discoveries. Her universities, libraries, laboratories,
scientific periodicals are the envy of more than one foreign nation.
She not only receives professors from abroad but sends out some of her own,
who are received with open arms—and open ears. They say things worthy
to be remembered and they increase the respect and sympathy every liberal
nation owes to theirs.

An even more telling proof that the problem is solved and that America
has come to her own in the matter of learning, is the high appreciation in
which are held, in every country, the medals, prizes or other tokens of
appreciation she may choose to bestow. Those tokens sometimes are the
sign not only of her appreciation of merit but of her inborn warm-heartedness
and generosity, as when, the other day, having heard that the discoverer of
radium possessed no radium she presented a gramme of the rare substance
to Madame Curie, the presentation being made at the White House by the
Chief of the State, in a speech that went to the heart not only of the illustrious
lady but of the whole of France.

To all this, foreign institutions render homage: they are glad to think
that their good wishes for you are sure to be fulfilled. What a man like
Jefferson founds is certain to prosper; and it is a good omen for the University
of Virginia that the man who secured her charter was also the one
who wrote the Declaration of Independence.

A FEW REPRESENTATIVE GREETINGS

Out of a large number of greetings only a score, because of space limitations,
are included in this volume. The original copies of all greetings may
be seen in the University Library.

Greetings from the University of Cambridge

L'UNIVERSITÉ DE PARIS À L'UNIVERSITÉ DE VIRGINIE

L'Université de Paris vous apporte, en ce jour mémorable du premier
centenaire de votre Université, ses compliments et ses voeux.

Un professeur étranger se sent de suite à l'aise parmi vous et dans l'enceinte
de votre "campus," car il n'oublie pas que vos premiers collaborateurs
furent précisément des étrangers, arrivés comme lui d'Europe. Dès
ses débuts, et, pour ainsi dire, avant la lettre, l'Université de Virginie réalisait
ainsi cette liaison intellectuelle et scientifique entre l'Amérique et l'Europe,
qui ramène aujourd'hui près de vous les délégués des Universités sœurs.

L'Université de Virginie s'est fait, dans le pays américain, une réputation
de charme irrésistible: je ne sais pas une autre Ecole, aux Etats-Unis,
dont ses "alumni" parlent avec autant de tendresse émue. Assurément, la
beauté des bâtiments et la douceur du climat ne suffisent pas à expliquer
cette attraction, car il ne manque pas de constructions magnifiques et de
sites choisis dans la liste des Universités américaines. Il faut, pour expliquer
le charme que vous exercez, admettre qu'il y a quelque chose de plus que des
causes ordinaires, et ce quelque chose semble bien être l'esprit de votre
fondateur qui se transmet, révéré et enrichi, de génération en génération.

Pour l'exprimer d'un mot, cet esprit de Jefferson, c'est l'esprit moderne
dans son sens le plus généreux et le plus large. L'idée qui a été déposée dans
vos murs avec la première pierre et la première truelle de ciment, c'est l'idee
essentiellement moderne de l'égalité devant l'instruction. Sans doute, une
université ne peut pourvoir à toutes les phases de l'enseignement, puisqu'elle
s'adresse à une élite déjà préparée. Mais l'idée de l'instruction universelle
qui hantait Jefferson dans le bouillonnement de ses jeunes années, était si
féconde, encore qu'irréalisable à son époque, qu'elle a comme déposé un
rayon de grâce et d'attirance dans le berceau de votre Université naissante.
Lorsque les projets, prenant corps lentement, à travers les difficultés administratives
et financières et les compétitions géographiques, se furent
fixés dans l'esprit de Jefferson et des hommes de bien qui furent ses collaborateurs,
on dut sans doute constater qu'une restriction avait été opérée,
et qu'à l'enseignement universitaire était seulement dévolue la tâche d'assurer
la culture "de la science à un haut degré." Mais en même temps,
l'idée primitive reparaissait dans une formule indiquant le but à poursuivre,
à savoir donner à chaque citoyen une instruction "en rapport avec ses ressources."
Ainsi, dans votre pays à peine installè dans sa jeune liberté, une
Université se fondait, tâtonnant à travers mille obstacles, mais guidée par ce
fanal qui jamais ne s'éteint, le souci de former l'âme populaire.

Voilà l'idée clairvoyante et généreuse qui a groupé vos disciples et qui
pénètre de sympathie pour vous vos visiteurs du Vieux-Monde.

Sans doute, la joie que nous éprouvons à nous joindre à vos fêtes ne
nous fait pas oublier à nous autres universitaires français, la terrible épreuve
que nous venons de traverser et l'hécatombe qui a fauché, parmi notre
jeunesse, les rangs les plus lourds d'espoir. Elle ne nous fait pas oublier non
plus le magnifique et généreux élan qui, parti de vos universités, a placé
votre pays à nos cotés dans la lutte suprême. Mais nous savons aussi que
la vie ne s'arrête pas à cause des deuils, et que l'herbe continue à verdir sur
nos tombes même les plus chéries. Le flot des générations nouvelles monte
sans s'arrêter les degrés qui mènent à nos salles, et nous savons que nous
avons la charge de guider sans faiblir l'âme de ceux d'aujourd'hui et de
ceux de demain, exactement comme si notre patrie ne venait pas d'être
bouleversée par l'ouragan. Le passé, nous ne l'oublions pas, c'est notre bien
à nous, c'est notre deuil sacré; mais nous ne voulons pas nous en laisser distraire
dans notre vision de l'avenir.

Laissez-moi donc vous assurer, Monsieur le Président, que l'Université
de Paris est, sans arrière-pensée, profondément heureuse de fêter avec vous
aujourd'hui votre anniversaire de joie et votre grand élan d'espérance. Le
spectacle de la jeunesse et de la vigueur de votre Université est bienfaisant
pour nous, car ces vertus nous garantissent que vous comprenez comme
nous l'aspiration commune qui doit nous unir, celle de préparer, pour nos
pays respectifs et pour le monde, un avenir de lumière où la science règne,
pacifique et large,—et en même temps un avenir de génerosité scientifique
répudiant à la fois l'esprit de domination et l'esprit d'orgueil, qui sont la
négation de la recherche, telle que la conçoivent de libres citoyens.

The President, Fellows and Faculty of Yale University send
their greetings to the University of Virginia, and congratulate its officers
and alumni on the completion of one hundred years of distinguished service
to the cause of the Arts and Sciences. They recognize that no American
University has had higher standards for degrees than the University of
Virginia, and that few institutions have done so much to train men to take
their part as leaders of citizenship in the Nation and its constituent commonwealths.
Intimately identified as it is with the immortal name of Jefferson
and with many men prominent in literature, scholarship, and public life,
such as Poe, Maury, Kane, Wilson, Davis, Gildersleeve, Tucker, Minor and
Venable, the institution has an unchallenged position in the front rank of
that small group of historic universities of national significance and influence.
The University has fully justified its founder's purpose as interpreted by

President Madison "to make it a nursery of republican patriots, as well as
genuine scholars."

The officers of Yale University have rejoiced at the progress made by
this ancient University "born of the union of human enthusiasm and civic
impulse" during the brilliant administration of President Alderman, and
hope and believe that it may serve the Commonwealth of Virginia and the
Nation with equal distinction during the generation to come.

In the necessary absence of President Hadley,

Rev. Anson Phelps Stokes, D.D., Secretary of the University,
has been duly appointed Yale University's delegate and will present these
greetings and congratulations.

[The University of Liège]

ILLUSTRISSIMÆ UNIVERSITATIS VIRGINIANÆ PRÆSIDI

S. P. D. Rector Universitatis Leodiensis

Pergratum fuit mihi collegisque meis, quod ex litteris tuis nuperrime
allatis didicimus, Universitatem, quæ in Virginia floret, annum ab origine
sua centesimum feliciter exactum propediem ineunte mense Iunio per quattuor
dies solemniter celebraturam. Vos iuvabit in memoriam revocare,
quæ magna percentum annos peregit Universitas vestra, quæ tam variæ et
multiplicis eruditionis luminibus in præterito illustrata est atque adeohodie
illustratur, quæ tam numerosæ iuventuti doctrinæ beneficia quotannis
impertit, ut trans Oceanum innotuerit et inter insignissimas litterarum et
scientiæ sedes iam numeretur. Nos iuvat collegis transmarinis, studiorum
communium vinculo nobiscum consociatis, toto animo gratulari.

Quod nos quoque vestri gaudii participes esse voluistis, gratias vobis
quam maximas agimus: nisi Oceano interposito et itineris longinquitate, nisi
exeuntis anni academici officiis et Universitatis nostræ instaunrandæ cura
essemus impediti, quæ per plus quam quattuor annos Transrhenanorum
barbaria desolata nunc demum pace parta reviviscit, legatum ad vos trans
Oceanum mittere placuisset, vestræ lætitiæ testem et participem futurum
qui vobis nostrum omnium nomine præsens gratularetur: nunc absentes
vobiscum sacra vestra celebrantibus lætabimur vobisque omnia fausta fortunataque
precati, exoptamus ut Universitas vestra Virginiana vitam tam

feliciter, tam præclare inchoatam per plurima sæcula in dies illustrior persequatur.
Vale.

Dabam Leodii Belgarum
anno MIMXXI die Mart. X

UNIVERSITATIS LEODIENSIS

Rector

Questo Rettorato, dispiacente che le presenti condizioni non gli consentano
di intervenire alla solenne celebrazione dell'anniversario della Fondazione
di codesta illustre Università, mentre ringrazia sentitamente per il
gentile invito, manda la sua cordiale adesione alla cerimonia, anche a nome
di questo Corpo Accademico, ed esprime i migliori e più fervidi auguri per
la prosperità di codesto Ateneo.

Con particolare osservanza.

RECTOR ET SENATUS UNIVERSITATIS CAROLINÆ PRAGENSIS
ALMÆ ET ANTIQUISSIMÆ UNIVERSITATI VIRGINIENSI

S. P. D.

Cum lætus ad nos nuntius allatus esset Universitatem Virginiensem,
quæ inter Universitates Americanas insignem locum obtinet sacra sæcularia
celebraturam esse, summo affecti sumus gaudio. At dolebamus, quod
propter itineris longinquitatem aliasque horum temporum difficultates
legatum ad sollemnia clarissimæ Universitatis celebranda mittere non possumus.

Quantopere autem Universitas nostra Carolina perenni flore inclitæ
Universitatis Virginiensis lætetur, his litteris declarare volumus.

Itaque quando illi dies festi Almæ Matris Virginiensis, qui erunt ex
pridie Kalendas usque ad a. d. III. Nonas Junias huius anni, advenient,
Universitas nostra celeberrimam Universitatem Virginiensem optimis
ominibus prosequetur exoptans, ut ad litterarum artiumque incrementum

Greetings from the University of Athens

atque ad salutem patriæ suæ totiusque generis humani utilitatem per multa
sæcula floreat, crescat, augeatur.

Datum Pragæ Kalendis Martiis anni MCMXXI, qui est ab Universitate
nostra condita quingentesimus septuagesimus tertius.

BROWN UNIVERSITY

Providence, R. I.

The Corporation and Faculty of Brown University extend to the University
of Virginia, on its hundredth anniversary, greeting and felicitation.

No institution of the higher learning has affected American education
more vitally and fruitfully than the University of Virginia. Your original
ideals and purposes were distinctly different from those animating the
colleges and universities of the North, and because you were different you
have helped us all.

More than seventy years ago the great president of Brown University,
Francis Wayland, seeking to effect certain changes in New England education,
was drawn to the institution founded by Thomas Jefferson. On returning
from his memorable visit he wrote his famous "Report to the Corporation"
of 1850, which was like the sound of a trumpet echoing through
the quiet valleys of New England. From that day Virginia began to make
its notable educational contribution to the Northern States.

We of Brown University greet you at the beginning of your second
century. May increased resources bring only increased devotion to the
early purpose of your distinguished founder, and may the fraternal interchange
of ideals and methods among American colleges grow with the growing
years.

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

The Ohio State University felicitates and congratulates the University
of Virginia upon the happy and honorable completion of One Hundred
Years in the service of Higher Education and expresses the hope that the
Centennial Exercises may deepen the interest in the Old Dominion and to
the Country rendered in the Century now past by the distinguished men
who have constituted the Faculty.

The Alumni have taken a high place in the history of the Country
representing in many instances the most distinguished citizenship of the
Nation. The spirit of the scholar has never departed since the illustrious

founder, Thomas Jefferson, laid the foundations of American Scholarship
devoted to the public service.

The University of Virginia in a very real sense a monument to his genius
is at the same time a testimonial of the men whose untiring energies have
sustained the ideals of Jefferson.

The President, Trustees and Faculty of Ohio State University greet
with enthusiasm their colleagues in the University of Virginia and have
commissioned Professor Rosser Daniel Bohannan, Class of 1876, University
of Virginia, and for thirty-four years Professor of Mathematics at Ohio
State University, to bear these greetings and to represent the University
in the Centennial exercises.

By the authority and direction of the Trustees of The Ohio State University,
Columbus, Ohio.

THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON

The Royal Society of London sends to the University of Virginia
its most cordial congratulations on the Hundredth Anniversary of its
Foundation.

Its long roll of alumni contains the names of many who have enriched
Natural Science and other branches of knowledge, of many who have advanced
the cause of learning, of many who have played a distinguished part
in affairs of State. Through these men the University of Virginia has contributed
to the intellectual heritage of the English-speaking race, and to the
civilization of the whole world. That the future of the University of Virginia
will be no less illustrious than its past is the sincere hope and confident belief
of the Royal Society of London.

THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION TO THE UNIVERSITY OF
VIRGINIA

Greeting

On the occasion of the centennial celebration of the University of Virginia,
the Smithsonian Institution most heartily congratulates the University
on its hundred years of prosperity and usefulness, its long line of
achievements in broadening knowledge in the learned professions, and on its
rolls of teachers and students bearing so many names of men of eminence
whose lives have honored their university and their country.

The Smithsonian Institution, founded for the increase and diffusion of
knowledge among men, extends to the University of Virginia its well wishes
for an even greater usefulness in the field of learning during future centuries.

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF
VIRGINIA UPON THE OCCASION OF ITS ONE
HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY

The most of the greetings conveyed to-day are from sister institutions
of learning. This, from a library, cannot claim quite equal rank; for a
library, though it contains certain of the elements of an institution of learning—an
essential apparatus, and, in a sense, a faculty—lacks others equally
essential; it neither prescribes a system of studies nor imposes authority in
their process, with deliberate selection, towards a definite end. Its greeting
cannot, therefore, bring the sympathy of a like experience in identical
problems.

But the Library so-called "of Congress" has a concern for learning far
beyond its immediate privileged constituency. It is a library "for research";
it has a paramount interest in the promotion of that research—everywhere—
whose end may be the widening of the boundaries of knowledge. And its
effort is to extend its resources freely and fully in aid of this. It does so
chiefly through the Universities; and its interest is keen in the prosperity
and progress of these. Having, itself, the duty to conserve and make useful
the records of the past, it especially rejoices in an institution who so persistently
honors and links itself with the past as does the University of
Virginia.

In addition to these general motives it has a unique sympathy with this
occasion from the fact that the universality of its collections and the seriousness
of its aims are preëminently due to Jefferson himself. The very foundation

of its present collections was Jefferson's own library; it was Jefferson
who named it "The Library of the United States"; and it was the comprehensiveness
of his selection, the largeness of his view, and his confident faith
in a democracy of learning, that, establishing thus early its character and
purpose, have assured its development into a library truly "national." It
therefore shares with you the shadow of the great Founder.

May that Shadow never grow less!

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY TO THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Greetings

To the University of Virginia, now celebrating the Centennial of her
founding, Vanderbilt University sends greetings and congratulations.

The rare beauty of buildings and grounds, the high standards and ideals
of scholarship, the adoption from the beginning of the principle of freedom
of electives, and the maintenance by the student body of the honor system,
have rightly won for her the admiration and praise of all American institutions.

The prestige of past achievements is the surest guarantee of her future
success.

That she may command the resources necessary for the extension of her
work and influence is the earnest wish of her younger sisters, who covet the
privilege of coöperating with her in the making of a greater nation.

GREETINGS:

In her Centennial Year
Celebrated May 31st, to June 3, 1921,
to the
University of Virginia
the first in America to grant a scholarship to
students from the
University of Belgrade
which was shattered in the World War,

Our greetings are sent to you officially through
Rosalie S. Morton, M.D., of Virginia,
the Founder and Chairman of the
International Serbian Educational Committee
from
our Executive Committee, Advisory Board, and the
students who are now studying in schools, colleges
and universities from Vermont to Texas and from
Massachusetts to California with heartfelt gratitude
and appreciation of the world comradeship
of
American educators, among the greatest of whom
for all time, Serbia honors the name
of
Thomas Jefferson

A LETTER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA FROM THE
RICE INSTITUTE

In accepting the invitation of the Rector and Visitors and the President
and Faculty of the University of Virginia requesting the presence of a delegate
from the Rice Institute during the exercises in celebration of the one
hundredth anniversary of the founding of the University to be held on
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, May the thirty-first to June
the third, nineteen hundred and twenty-one, the Trustees and Faculty of the
Rice Institute have pleasure also in announcing the appointment of Mr.
Stockton Axson, Litt.D., L.H.D., LL.D., Professor of English Literature, to
represent on so auspicious an occasion in the history of University education
in America the youngest of educational foundations in the South, and to
bear to the University of Virginia, Alma Mater of men and of universities,
cordial greetings of congratulation and good-will from the Rice Institute, a
university of liberal and technical learning founded by William Marsh Rice,
and dedicated by him to the advancement of Letters, Science and Art, by
instruction and by investigation in the individual and in the race of humanity.
And these cordial greetings carry also grateful recognition of several
reminders of his ancient university which an alumnus of Virginia may discover
in the environment of the new institution in Texas: a campus site of

spacious dimensions and a comprehensive architectural plan of dignity and
distinction; the spirit of research and teaching housed in a home of extraordinary
beauty as well as of more immediate utility, and the features of the
founder of the University of Virginia cut in stone among the effigies of its
patron saints in the more humane letters, ancient and modern, and the
fundamental sciences, pure and applied; a society of scholars seeking solutions
of the universe of thought and things, and a guild of students living a
common life under the restraining influences of an honor system of self-government:
these reflections of academic traditions that flourished in
Virginia's early history: and Faith and Freedom: here the freedom of the
plains, as there the freedom of the mountains: here, as there, faith in the
capacity of human intelligence to find in human experience firm foundations
of hope for the human spirit: and here as there, the freedom vouchsafed by a
heavenly vision of service towards which men may well press forward,
heartened by whatever of progress our civilization may have already
achieved towards Justice, Security, Tolerance, Knowledge.

LIST OF DELEGATES

Delegates from Institutions in Foreign Countries

University of Paris

Professor Jules Legras

University of Oxford

Professor Beverley Dandridge Tucker, Jr.

University of Cambridge

Professor Ernest William Brown

University of Saint Andrews

Mr. William John Matheson

University of Geneva

His Excellency Marc Peter

University of Edinburgh

Professor John Kelman

The Royal Society

Professor Ernest William Brown

University of Christiania

Mr. Arne Kildal

University of Toronto

Professor Wilfred Pirt Mustard

Queen's University

Professor Samuel Alfred Mitchell

The Queen's University of Belfast

The Reverend John Edgar Park

Victoria University of Manchester

Professor John William Cunliffe

University of Belgrade

Mrs. Rosalie Slaughter Morton

Delegates from Institutions in the United States

Harvard University

President Abbott Lawrence Lowell

Professor Archibald Cary Coolidge

The College of William and Mary

President Julian Alvin Carroll Chandler

Saint John's College

President Thomas Fell

Yale University

The Reverend Anson Phelps Stokes

American Philosophical Society

Professor John Campbell Merriam

University of Pennsylvania

Acting-Provost Josiah Harmar Penniman

Princeton University

President John Grier Hibben

Professor Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker

Columbia University

Professor John Bassett Moore

Brown University

President William Herbert Perry Faunce

Rutgers College

President William Henry Steele Demarest

Dartmouth College

Professor Douglas VanderHoof

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Mr. Robert Simpson Woodward

Washington and Lee University

President Henry Louis Smith

Hampden-Sidney College

Professor James Shannon Miller

The University of the State of New York

The Honorable Charles Beatty Alexander

University of North Carolina

President Harry Woodburn Chase

Bowdoin College

The Honorable Wallace Humphrey White, Jr.

Library of Congress

Mr. Herbert Putnam

University of South Carolina

President William Spenser Currell

United States Military Academy

Major Robert Henry Lee

University of Maryland

Professor Thomas Hardy Taliaferro

Professor Gordon Wilson

Union Theological Seminary, Virginia

Professor Thomas Cary Johnson

Centre College

Dean John Redd

The George Washington University

Professor Mitchell Carroll

Amherst College

Professor William Jesse Newlin

Western Reserve University

Mr. Robert Algar Woolfolk

Lafayette College

President John Henry MacCracken

Randolph-Macon College

President Robert Emory Blackwell

The University of Richmond

Professor Samuel Chiles Mitchell

University of Delaware

President Walter Hullihen

Haverford College

President William Wistar Comfort

Wake Forest College

Professor Benjamin Sledd

Union Theological Seminary, New York

President Arthur Cushman McGiffert

Mount Holyoke College

Professor Margaret Shove Morriss

University of Michigan

Professor Morris Palmer Tilley

Mercer University

The Reverend Henry Wilson Battle

Medical College of Virginia

Mr. Eli Lockert Bemiss

University of Missouri

President Albert Ross Hill

Professor George Lefevre

Virginia Military Institute

Colonel Hunter Pendleton

Hollins College

President Martha Louisa Cocke

The Citadel

Colonel Oliver James Bond

University of Mississippi

Mrs. Anna Abbott McNair

Professor Alexander Lee Bondurant

Ohio Wesleyan University

The Honorable William Van Zandt Cox

United States Naval Academy

Professor Charles Alphonso Smith

Smithsonian Institution

Mr. Charles Greeley Abbot

The College of the City of New York

Professor Charles Baskerville

The University of Wisconsin

Mr. Charles Noble Gregory

Roanoke College

The Honorable Lloyd Mileham Robinette

The Pennsylvania State College

Professor Albert Henry Tuttle

The University of the South

Professor Samuel Marx Barton

Vassar College

Mrs. John Scott Walker

Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts

Brigadier General Edward Albert Kreger

National Academy of Sciences

Rear-Admiral David Watson Taylor

Swarthmore College

Miss Mary Elizabeth Pidgeon

Gallaudet College

Vice-President Charles Russell Ely

Cornell University

Former President Jacob Gould Schurman

Professor Thomas Leonard Watson

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Mr. Allerton Seward Cushman

Lehigh University

Professor Harvey Ernest Jordan

University of Kentucky

Professor Graham Edgar

West Virginia University

President Frank Butler Trotter

Professor Charles Edward Bishop

Bureau of Education

Professor George Frederick Zook

The Johns Hopkins University

President Frank Johnson Goodnow

University of California

Mr. Frederick Leslie Ransome

The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute

President James Edgar Gregg

The University of Minnesota

Dean Thomas Poe Cooper

The University of Nebraska

Professor George Bernard Noble

Purdue University

Dean Charles Henry Benjamin

Boston University

Professor Ralph Lester Power

The Ohio State University

Professor Rosser Daniel Bohannan

Syracuse University

Mr. Clarence Norton Goodwin

University of Cincinnati

President Frederick Charles Hicks

Professor Harris Hancock

University of Arkansas

President John Clinton Futrall

Virginia Polytechnic Institute

Professor John Edward Williams

University of Oregon

Mr. Clyde Bruce Aitchison

University of Nevada

Mr. James Fred Abel

Vanderbilt University

Professor Edwin Mims

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Professor Samuel Alfred Mitchell

Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College

Mrs. Anna Abbott McNair

Bridgewater College

Professor Frank James Wright

University of Texas

Professor Robert Emmet Cofer

The John Slater Fund

President James Hardy Dillard

University of South Dakota

Mr. Herbert Sherman Houston

Mississippi State College for Women

Mrs. Anna Abbott McNair

Miss Emma Ody Pohl

State Normal School for Women, Farmville

President Joseph Leonard Jarman

Leland Stanford Junior University

Mr. Roger Topp

The Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Acting-President Cyrus Adler

Catholic University of America

Dean Aubrey Edward Landry

National Geographic Society

Judge Richard Thomas Walker Duke, Jr.

Teachers College

Professor William Heard Kilpatrick

Randolph-Macon Woman's College

President Dice Robins Anderson

Virginia College

Miss Gertrude Neal

Sweet Briar College

President Emilie Watts McVea

Carnegie Institution of Washington

President John Campbell Merriam

General Education Board

The Reverend Anson Phelps Stokes

University of Florida

Mr. William Kenneth Jackson

Harrisonburg State Normal School

Professor John Walter Wayland

Professor Raymond Carlyle Dingledine

The Rice Institute

President Edgar Odell Lovett

Professor Stockton Axson

The Rockefeller Foundation

The Reverend Anson Phelps Stokes

Southern Methodist University

Professor John Owen Beaty

American Council on Education

Mr. Samuel Paul Capen

THE UNVEILING OF THE MEMORIAL TABLET TO WORLD WAR HEROES

Invocation offered at the Dedication of the Memorial Tablet by Reverend
Beverley D. Tucker, Jr.

Almighty and everlasting God who art the author and giver of life, and who
in all the ages past hast inspired the sons of men with a sense of their heritage
to become sons of God; we yield Thee hearty thanks for this our Alma
Mater, who under Thy divine guidance has been a maker and molder of men.

We give Thee thanks for our fathers who, in a former day, went forth
from this place to give their lives for home and country. We give Thee
thanks for these our brothers who, in this latter day, went forth in this same
exalted spirit that freedom might not perish from the earth. We commend
them, O God, to Thy fatherly care and protection, and pray that their
names emblazoned here may shine in our hearts as the stars forever, that the
cause for which they died may yet through us prevail.

O Thou strong Father of all nations, draw all Thy great family together
with an increasing sense of our common blood and destiny, that peace may
come on earth at last, and Thy sun may shed forth its light rejoicing on a
holy brotherhood of peoples.

We ask it all in the name of Him, who is the perfect Son of Man and
the eternal Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

REMARKS OF THE PRESIDING OFFICER, LIEUTENANT COLONEL CUTCHINS

(Introducing Captain Barksdale)

It is a beautiful and an inspiring thought that the first assembly of the
alumni of the University of Virginia, returning to celebrate the completion
of Alma Mater's one hundred years of service to State and Nation, should
be for the purpose of doing honor to, and perpetuating the memory of, those
former students of the University who gave their lives in order that the
ideals for which their Alma Mater always had stood might endure, and who,
by their death, exemplified the daily teachings and the loftiest traditions of
this University.

No graver charge can be lodged against any country than that it is ungrateful
to those who have fallen in its defense, or neglectful of the obligation
to perpetuate their memory. That the names of those immortal sons of
Virginia who willingly have given their lives in order that that civilization,
for which the University of Virginia has stood for a century, might be perpetuated
for unnumbered centuries yet to come, shall not go unrecorded and
unhonored, is due to the zeal, the loyalty and the patriotism of the classes
of 1918, 1919, 1920, and of the Seven Society. Those classes and that
society have earned not only the thanks of the great body of the alumni,
but they have earned as well the thanks of the countless thousands of Virginia
students who in the years that are to come will walk these paths, and,
walking here, will stop to read the names of that immortal company, and,
reading, will be inspired to go forth and so conduct themselves in the world
of men that the cause of civilization may be advanced, and that they too,
in time, may merit and win the thanks of Alma Mater.

One indeed treads upon sacred ground when one attempts to interpret
to the living the voices or the wishes of those who have passed beyond, but
I make bold to say that if that silent company who are to-day bivouacked
"on fame's eternal camping ground" could give expression to their sentiments,
they would bid me say that it is a source of satisfaction to them that
this Tablet Memorial is to be presented in their honor by one who himself
has inhaled the smoke of battle, one who himself has engaged in hand to
hand conflict with the foe, and one who has borne the seemingly endless
vigil of the long nights before the days of battle.

That my old comrade of the 29th Division, who will present this beautiful
tablet to-day, meets fully those requirements I personally can testify.
Nor need I give personal testimony, for the government of the United States
has recognized that fact officially, by awarding him the Distinguished Service
Cross for three separate acts of exceptional gallantry on three different
days of battle.

It is therefore with much pleasure that I present Captain Alfred Dickinson
Barksdale, who now will present this Tablet Memorial to the University
of Virginia.

ADDRESS OF CAPTAIN A. D. BARKSDALE, PRESENTING THE MEMORIAL TABLET

Thousands of miles away upon the friendly bosom of a sister republic
lie these heroic sons of Alma Mater. Filled with the loftiest ideals known to
mankind these modern Argonauts sailed three thousand miles to engage in
the mightiest conflict since the creation, and with their fellows they cast
their deciding weight into the balance on the side of humanity.

In that vast cataclysm which so recently enveloped the earth many
there were who made sacrifices, who gave of their time, of their means, of
their blood—but these have given their all; they have given their lives.
Only a few short years have passed since they in the fullness of their strong
young manhood were capable of standing here as we stand and feeling that
thrill which contact with this noble old Jeffersonian structure always inspires.
It seems as if it were but yesterday when they moved among us,
and made life brighter by their presence. But to-day their places are vacant
and we are gathered to honor their memory. From far and near we have
gathered to print their names in everlasting bronze upon the walls of this
Rotunda. But nothing that we do here or can ever do will add anything to
their glory. Their names have been ineradicably enrolled upon the great
American Roll of Honor. Those of us who knew them will always bear their
memory fresh in our hearts until we are called over yonder. But our days
are numbered and as we grow old and fulfill our allotted span we shall wither

Tablet Memorial Unveiled on Second Day of Centennial

as the grass. "They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; age
shall not weary them nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun
and in the morning we will remember them." When we are gone generations
yet unborn will honor them. I know of no more priceless heritage to
one entering these portals than to be able to point to this tablet and say,
"I am descended from one of these."

In the early days just after America had aligned herself upon the side
of freedom and right, throughout the land there was a feeling of uncertainty
whether or not we Americans untried in war were capable of withstanding
the fierce onslaught of the Hun. The whole world stood anxiously watching
to see how Americans would stand the test. How they went through their
trial by battle, how they underwent their baptism of fire is now writ large
upon the glorious pages of the history of the world. And we are gathered
here to-day to place upon the walls of our University the names of her sons
who gave their all that their country's honor should be unsullied and to
show the world that Americans could still die for their country.

Since we cannot fathom the infinite we can never know why the grim
reaper as he stalked over the battlefields and army camps chose these.
Sometimes it seems as if it were all wrong; that only the best were taken;
that there must have been some great mistake somewhere up in the infinite.
But I think not. One night on the bank of the Meuse just after dusk, when
the guns were roaring and the shells were crashing everywhere, and the
whole world seemed in an uproar and confusion, I chanced to turn my eyes
upward and in the heavenly firmament above, countless myriads of stars
shone down upon the earth beneath; each one in its accustomed place unmoved,
unperturbed and imperturbable. Then over me surged the consciousness
that somewhere there was a Supreme Being who ruled over the
battlefield, who guided the destinies of mankind, and directed everything
according to His infinite plan, and although at times it seems that since the
war both nations and people have grown more selfish and subject to petty
jealousies, surely such sacrifices could not have been for naught. If we keep
faith with those who lie beneath the poppies, surely the world will be a better
place because of their sacrifices.

It was my privilege to serve with one of those whose names are written
on this tablet, Robert Young Conrad. In a few minutes his daughter, who
has never known the depth of her father's love and whose little body will
never be held in her father's strong arms, will assist in the unveiling. Together
we marched through the black night of October 7, 1918, to our position
in advance of the French lines from whence we were to attack at dawn.
The gloomy, drizzly night which disspirited many rather heightened than
dampened his spirits. "The very night for us," he said, "we can get ready
without being observed." Arrived at our position we lay down for a few

hours' rest on the wet hillside. Before the first rays of morning light he
called to me that it was time to place our troops in order of battle. As the
day slowly broke I could hear him calling to his men and placing them in
their respective positions. At dawn the roar of our barrage and the shrieks
of the shells overhead burst upon our ears. At zero hour he moved off in the
midst of his men and I could hear him calling to them with words of encouragement
and cheer. When the shells of the enemy's counter barrage
began to fall I could see him here, there and everywhere strengthening and
encouraging his men. Finally he disappeared over a hill and I never saw
him again. Hearing that one of his platoons had been halted by a murderous
machine gun fire, without a moment's hesitation he hastened to lead them
in the charge and fell mortally wounded. He was carried unconscious to
the rear and died in the little village of Glorieux, near Verdun. Aye, at
Glorieux, he met death gloriously.

It would take too long to recount the daring and unselfish exploits of
all of them, but whether they were called when soaring above the clouds as
Jim McConnell or while in the execution of some more prosaic task, in the
death of each one of them surely there is a glory incomparable. Free from
all that is mean and petty they went to meet their Creator inspired by the
noblest impulses known to mankind. They were taken at the high tide, at a
point where regard for self sunk into nothingness, and devotion to the cause
reigned supreme. "Don't bother with me, go ahead," murmured one of
them with his last conscious breath.

Although they loved life they did not fear death. Doubtless all of us
when filled with the romance of youth have read with bated breath of heroes
who met death with a smile and wondered what sort of divine clay they
were molded of. But we need wonder no longer, for here is the roll of Virginia's
sons, our brothers, in whom were inculcated the principles of right
and justice and duty, so that when the call came, they did not hesitate but
hastened cheerfully to lay down their lives, and if they had any regret it
was for those they loved and left behind.

Death is always a solemn thing and perforce sad, but for these, our
fallen comrades, we should repress our tears and rather let our souls swell
with pride in the glorious heritage they have bequeathed to their Alma
Mater. No one of these generous unselfish souls would ever wish sorrowful
tears shed for him. I believe that Alan Seeger, that valiant American who
also lies over there, expressed the wish of each of these when he said:

Mr. Rector, we present to you for the University this tablet "in memory
of the sons of this University, who gave their lives for freedom in the World
War." May its presence here always be an inspiration to Virginia's sons
and may it stand forever as a proof that amongst the sons of this University
'tis counted a glorious thing to die for one's Country.

ADDRESS BY JOHN STEWART BRYAN, RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY, ACCEPTING
THE TABLET

On this porch, a little more than half a century ago, were gathered
students in whose ears still sounded the drums and tramplings of the War
Between the States.

There, in graven bronze, are five hundred and fifty names of those who
marched forth under the flag of Virginia, and died in the defense of their
homes. Here are the memorials to their fourscore younger brothers who in
their day and generation heard the shrill bugle, and gladly followed the call
of duty.

The sad sagacity of age has taught us that nothing built with hands
can "hold out against the wreckful siege of battering days," and yet we
place this tablet on the walls of this century-old Rotunda in response to a
wish that lies deep in the heart of humanity. That desire to enshrine beloved
memory beyond the changes and chances of time is one that has come to all
men everywhere. Every heart has its inner shrine. To the university's
great altar we bring to-day this frail barrier against the engulfing tides of
oblivion. Size is not the measure of our memorial. The Pyramids of the
Nile have no such spiritual import as the most obscure cross in Flanders
field. And who can compute the power that gave this tablet its long roll of
the Knights of the University, the champions of pure liberty, the Galahads
of pure manhood?

When those boys were born, the possibility of international conflict
belonged to the limbo of

and war seemed as far removed from the peaceful course of their lives as
volcanoes are from the calm Blue Ridge. As those young men grew up, they
saw nearly one half of our revenue being spent for works of peace, and now
95% is poured out for war, past, present and to come.

What was it in those boys that throbbed in response to the drumming
guns? Why was it then that those boys heard in these quiet shades the
blare of the war trumpet, when older and wiser heads still dreamt of peace?
What was it that called into instant action their aptitude for command and
their instinct for war? It was the glorious atavism in the blood of men
whose fathers and forefathers endured pain, darkness and cold at Valley
Forge, or stormed the heights of Chapultepec, or set new standards for military
genius and personal bravery at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. The
blood that gave that type is coursing in the veins of Virginia. The inspiration
that controlled those lives is still potent.

Experience could have seen that those great spirits needed but the
revealing touch of death's finger to show that like their elder brothers of
Virginia blood they, too, when

Heredity alone will not explain the achievements of these sons of the
University. It was blood, yes, but it was training; it was heredity, but
heredity developed by environment; it was the soul of the South and the
traditions of the University of Virginia that made perfect those gentlemen
unafraid. It was not the Prussian drill master, but the Virginia school
master, that inspired those students and fortified their souls and liberated
their intellect. Those boys lived in the last unpoliced institution on earth.
No guardian was set over them here at the University, except the guardian
of conscience; they were tried and tested by the unwritten code of gentlemen;
they were electrified by the powerful spiritual currents that flow unimpeded
through the halls and arcades of this great school. No law bound them
except the law of honor, and by their lives, as by their death, they proved
again that an ideal is not only the most noble, but also the most useful
possession that an institution may give or a nation receive. They had
eaten the bread of Virginia in which lived transubstantiated the soul and
body of the whole nation. They found that to be a gentleman was at once
the crown and the sanction of life, and they showed by their willingness to
die that the certainty of sacrifice is the guerdon of greatness.

The glory that radiates from that tablet is the glory of the spirit of the
University of Virginia. The shining faces of those sacred dead have caught
the light of honor, and that flame will never perish from the earth while the
memory of their deeds endures.

Nor is the radiance theirs alone. Its light is upon us, too, for we who
stand here this afternoon are in a very real sense members of that mystical
body of Virginians who, living and dead, have fashioned the soul of this
Commonwealth. By ties of blood, by the unifying influence of race and

The Unveiling of the Tablet Memorial to World War Alumni

tradition, by the welding force of a common ideal, by the impress of the
same youthful enthusiasm awakened and amplified at the University, our
hearts are one with theirs. We grasp with an appreciation that far transcends
any power of reason what it was that made their lives luminous and
their deaths not in vain.

We dedicate this tablet, and with swelling throats and uplifted hearts
we turn again to the common tasks of daily life. That bronze memorial
stands immobile and silent; of itself it can do nothing; it is we alone, and our
lives alone, that can make it a vitalizing force. It is we, and we alone,
professors, alumni, students and citizens, who can surcharge that noble
scroll with an ever renewing energy. And this we can do by so living that
the spirit of those youths shall never be a stranger in these halls. For only
the souls of the living can make and keep the University a congenial home
for the souls of the dead.

This is no easy task. Our right to claim companionship with those
shining exemplars must be won in conflict with the hosts of darkness, even
as theirs was won. In the reeking trenches of France, in sweating camps,
and silent hospitals, across barbed-wire, and under the whirlwind of shrapnel
or the thunderclap of T. N. T., the sons of the University won their right to
be brothers in arms with the mighty men of all ages, who, from Thermopylæ
to Château-Thierry

Many of us were not in uniform. Oh, never mind the reason, for each
heart knew its own bitterness when the angel with the flaming sword passed
by; but all of us can be brothers in spirit with those whose virtues we revere,
and whose names we commemorate to-day. Like them, we can face our
duty without flinching; like them we know what high adventure America
sought in entering the war, and for them, as for ourselves, we can repel the
base slander that America made her stupendous effort not to save her soul,
but to save her skin!

It is not the expenditure of Forty Billions; it is not the long rows of
75,640 silent dead that sleep in Belleau Woods and elsewhere in France,
that mark the full extent of the price we paid. Ah, no! America's contribution
is not in shot-torn troops, but in shattered ideals; our loss is not in men
and money, but in morale and faith. And the mere fact that such a calumny
on the ideals of a great nation could be uttered by an ambassador who has
continued unrebuked at his post is evidence enough that what America is
suffering from is not poverty of goods, but destitution of spirit.

And this tablet we dedicate to-day—if we ourselves do not keep faith
with those who died for the soul of America—will not be a memorial, but a

mockery and if we are not baptized with the baptism of those we commemorate,
we will stand not as brothers, but as blasphemers before

The souls of those men are here, radiant with imperishable glory, leading
the way with strong exulting wing where we, with slow tread, must follow.

How shall we name them all, and how shall we discriminate among
those equals in valor of purpose and fortitude of execution? We cannot
choose or pick among that chivalry—when all are calling to us to "Be true
to the nation, be true to Virginia, be true to the spirit of the University,"—
and by God's good grace, we will!

REMARKS OF THE PRESIDING OFFICER, COL. CUTCHINS, INTRODUCING THE
FRENCH AMBASSADOR

As long as memory lasts, and whenever men and women shall gather
together in any part of the world for the purpose of memorializing the names
or the deeds of those who participated in the World War, there is one name
that, above all others, will be in every mind—the name of France—France,
glorious and immortal!

On the beloved soil of our own Virginia there are scars, long since healed,
that mark the burial places of soldiers of France who stood shoulder to
shoulder with the soldiers of America when America was fighting for her
liberty and for her existence as a nation; on the sacred soil of France there are
scars, not yet healed, that mark the burying places of countless thousands
of the sons of America who laid down their lives more than a century later to
preserve not only the liberty and the national life of France, but to preserve
civilization as well. These scars indicate ties which neither time nor circumstances
can sever.

It is indeed a happy coincidence that to this memorable ceremony at
the University of Virginia, founded by Jefferson who, afterwards, was sent
as an ambassador of the United States to France, there has come the distinguished
Ambassador of France to the United States, to do honor to the
memory of those sons of Virginia who have fallen in the greatest cause for
which man ever has fought. He has graciously consented to express to us
the sentiments of his countrymen on this occasion.

I have the honor and the pleasure to present His Excellency, M. Jusserand,
the distinguished Ambassador of France to the United States.

[Note by the Editor.—As the eloquent address of Ambassador Jusserand
was entirely extemporaneous, it was, unfortunately, not reported. The
Ambassador very graciously consented to speak at the last minute in the
absence of M. Gabriel Hanotaux who had hoped to be present.]

THE CENTENNIAL PAGEANT

THE SHADOW OF THE BUILDER

By Mrs. Frances O. J. Gaither

Foreword

W. M. Forrest,
Chairman, Pageant Committee.

This pageant is the farthest possible remove from the historical pageant
that seeks to visualize the development of an institution by a series of
tableaux or floats reflecting various important episodes of its life. It has
also chosen another way to reflect the spiritual element of the University's
life than by the insertion in the pageant of allegorical interludes, or by an
accompanying masque. It is a narrative of the way that Thomas Jefferson
planned his University, both the body of it and the soul of it. About the
struggle to get nothing but the best builded into the material structure of
the University there is woven a simple but compelling drama. Nerving the
great dreamer to make no compromise with the people who wanted something
cheap and quickly put to work, nor with his own ardent desire to see
the University open and at its task, were his visions of the young life yet to
throng its colonnades.

So into the story of a single day in the University's opening history
the author of the pageant has packed all the hopes, and dreams, and struggles
leading up to that day, and all the fruition of those hopes and dreams and
struggles flowing down through a century of life. It was the day when
Lafayette was entertained at the unfinished University upon his return, in
old age, to the land to which in youth his sword had helped to give freedom.
It was also the day upon which the Father of the University was confronted
by the fact that his determination to have nothing but the best for his buildings
involved another long delay, a new struggle with popular opposition
and with the legislature to get more money. At every crisis of the debate
with himself and others over this matter during the long day, compromise
was made impossible to Jefferson by the visions he saw of youth—beautiful,
ardent, truth seeking, honor loving, joyous, sacrificial youth, as it yet should
live and be trained in the University. And so the decision to have his
capitals of Carrara marble ended his struggle, and forever determined that
his University would content itself with no less than the best, cost what it
may.

That the dreams of the old philosopher should be expressed in terms of
Greek life is fitting. From classical architecture he drew inspiration for his
buildings. The democracies of the Greek cities helped him in all his work
and hopes for a free people. The untrammeled soul of Socrates gave him an

ideal for the professors of his new temple of learning, and the beauty loving,
truth seeking youths of Athens were such men as he fain would see crowding
the colonnades and pavilions of his own athenæum.

As the alumni and friends of the University of Virginia watch the
unfolding of this pageant-drama they will not find its artistic harmony
marred by any intrusion of historical scenes, such as the meeting wherein
the honor system was inaugurated by faculty and students, nor the marching
away of the student soldiers of 1861 or 1917, nor yet of the athletic struggles
nor the Easter time festivities of their college days. Yet in looking upon the
scenes wherein Socrates and his pupils discourse of the ideals of youth, and
the young men, in solemn ceremonial before the altar, consecrate themselves
to honor and truth, there must stir anew in the heart of every beholder
that passion for truth and honor which has been the soul of the University
throughout its century of life. And in song and dance to the accompaniment
of martial music will be revived again the memories of those days
when the men of the University met the acid test of patriotism and went
forth to battle and to die upon the fields of Virginia and of France.

Likewise will the echoes of bygone athletic combats and the festal
strains of far-off Easter and Finals' revels resound in the corridors of memory
as the dream figures of the pageant strive for the mastery, and mingle in
their dances of youth and love. Nor will any fail to catch the vision into the
true heart of youth flashing out from those scenes where the lads, engaged
in high converse upon truth and the dedication of life to art and philosophy,
to toil and battle, are instantly diverted to dancing and revelry by the sight
of their "Helen of a thousand dreams."

It was a far cry from that scene a hundred years ago where Jefferson
struggled for the best for his University to the moment when that University
gave to the cause of world freedom its many valiant sons. But it all seems
shadowed forth amid the rising walls of a new temple of learning and freedom
when Jefferson and Lafayette met and the flags of America and France
mingled. None then could see when the khaki clad hosts of America would
speak through the lips of their commander to the spirit of the old Marquis
of France saying, "Lafayette, we are here." But a Jefferson could know that
his athenæum, for which nought but the true and the good would suffice,
would not fail to have ready, in every hour of the world's need, heroes of
peace and heroes of war whose service would be all the more whole-hearted
because they had whistled and danced and sung while pursuing truth and
honor amid the cloisters and colonnades of the University of Virginia.

Overture and Interludes composed by Mr. John Powell.

Music for Songs, composed by Mr. George Harris, Jr.

Solo and Duet Dances, composed by Mr. Alexander Oumansky.

Scenes on the Moving Picture Screen from the University's Early History

1. (Upper left) Alumni Secretary Crenshaw Directing Scenes

2. (Upper right) Italian Workmen Carving a Capital

3. (Center) Jefferson and LaFayette Pledge Each the Other's Health

4. (Lower left) Laying of the Corner-stone

5. (Lower right) Making the Confederate Flag

Director of Pageant and Composer of Group Dances, Miss Emma Ody Pohl.

Assistant Director, Miss Grace Dorothy Massengale.

Dramatic Director, Mr. William Harrison Faulkner.

Musical Director, Mr. Arthur Fickenscher.

Music by the Washington Concert Orchestra. Conductor, Mr. Herman
Rakemann.

The Cast

     

Jefferson	Mr. William Mentzel Forrest
Cornelia, his granddaughter	Miss Gladys Gunter
Lafayette	Mr. William Hall Goodwin

     

Cabell	Visitors of the University	Mr. George Oscar Ferguson, Jr.
Madison, ex-President of the United States		Mr. Robert Henning Webb
Monroe, President of the United States		Mr. George Bordman Eager, Jr.

                         

Raggi, an Italian stone-carver	Mr. Francis Harris Abbot
Brockenbrough, the proctor	Mr. Bruce Williams
Gorman, a workman	Mr. Henning Cunningham Nelms
A Voter	Mr. John Jennings Luck
Workmen	Ladies and gentlemen of the community
People of Virginia
Local Dignitaries
Staff of Lafayette
Phædrus, a youth	Mr. Staige Davis Blackford
Lysis, his comrade	Mr. Dorsey Bland
Socrates	Mr. Richard Heath Dabney
An Athenian Girl	Miss Nina Weeden Oliver
A Priestess	Mrs. Sylvia Faulkner

             

Dancers	Miss Augusta Alexander	Miss Emily Massengale
	Miss Daphne Baggett	Miss Katharine McGrath
	Miss Frances Bahin	Miss Hettie Newell
	Miss Belle Bond	Miss Rebecca Pegues
	Miss Marguerite Briscoe	Miss Edith Reid
	Miss Josephine Campbell	Miss Eola Williams
	Miss Eugenia Howell	Miss Frances Woodward

         

Maidens	Young ladies of the community
Temple Attendants
Flute Players	Students of the University
Men of Athens
A Host of Youths

THE SHADOW OF THE BUILDER

Prelude

High buildings, drenched with light, flank an amphitheatre where,
to festival music, gather the alumni of the University of Virginia. Beyond
a green lawn dimly shows the façade of a low building. When the people
have assembled, the music changes, the lights all about grow dim, and the
façade ahead whitens into beauty. Against it forms with increasing distinctness,
the shadow of the Galt statue of Thomas Jefferson. And then the
shadow fades, leaving only its pedestal, a real, unfinished Corinthian capital
of coarse stone.

(Across the lawn come workmen. They fall to work; and as they pound
their hammers and scrape their trowels, they sing:)
(Gorman, a workman of great stature, coming up from the lawn, goes
to the blunt, half-shaped capital and inspects it in mock appreciation.)
GORMAN

Copied right out of one of Mr. Jefferson's pretty picture-books, every
leaf curled just so.

A WORKMAN
(Laying down his trowel and smiling sarcastically.)

But Signor Raggi is an artist, Gorman. He's no clumsy American
stonecutter with thumbs for fingers.

(Gorman leans against the stone and, lighting his pipe, indulges in un-

---

59

couth mimicry punctuated by puffs of smoke. His audience drop
tools and relax into attitudes of enjoyment.)

GORMAN

Ah, Signor Jefferson, how the American stone is brittle. It crumbles
like cheese. In Italy, signor—

(Such acclaim and laughter greet the intonation of this evidently familiar
phrase that Gorman's voice is quite drowned; and only the exaggerated
shrug of his great shoulders carries on the imitation. Raggi,
a stone-carver of Leghorn, comes lightly up the steps from the lawn,
blithely whistling a scrap of opera melody. He is a nervous person,
whose jaunty breeches and scarlet cap atilt, stamp him as alien as his
every syllable, liquid, vivacious.)

RAGGI

Good-morning, signori. You rest? Signor Gorman entertains you with
a bit of pantomime. Yes? (He does not seem to notice that his airy greeting
meets but surly, half-articulate response.)
I must warn you: I have passed
the proctor.

(He smiles at the general scramble to resume work.)

GORMAN
(Alone scorning to stir.)

Mr. Brockenbrough knows we are not loafers—Mr. Jefferson, too.

(Raggi resumes his whistling, softly, and falls to chiselling the capital.)

RAGGI

Pardon. Just a little aside, signor, you delay my chisel.

GORMAN

Delay? Hm. And you trying stone from every quarry in Virginia for
nearly twelve months—at so much a day.

(Raggi's chisel slips. A sliver of stone cracks off and goes rattling to
the floor. He whirls upon Gorman, mallet uplifted, face dark with
anger.)

RAGGI

Me, an artist! You accuse!

(Brockenbrough comes up from the lawn and steps between them. He
is evidently weighted with a thousand cares.)

BROCKENBROUGH

What is this?

RAGGI

An infamy on my art! A cruel infamy!

GORMAN

Mister Raggi has spoiled another capital.—But he is used to that.
Why should he get excited?

(A shadow falls upon them, the natural, morning shadow of Thomas
Jefferson who has come silently up the steps at the end of the terrace.
Jefferson is a tall, old man in an old-fashioned, snowy stock, and suit
of homely gray broadcloth. Before his steady gaze Gorman drops
his eyes swiftly and turns away. The workmen doff caps in ready
respect.)

JEFFERSON

Ah, Gorman. Good-morning, Mr. Brockenbrough. More trouble,
signor?

RAGGI
(The angry attitude relaxing, his tone dropping to a plaint.)

Madonna! The coarse stone, like cheese. I but tap it once, so. Crack!
The work of weeks gone.

(Cornelia, the granddaughter of Jefferson, following him, exclaims with
sympathy at Raggi's ill luck. She is a wistful young person with
great earnest eyes and she carries, as if it were most precious, a great
portfolio in her arms. Going to the rough-hewn stone, she lays the
portfolio down and touches with her finger tips the scar.)

CORNELIA

Is it quite spoiled?

BROCKENBROUGH

Chop off the curl of the leaf, Raggi. It will never be noticed—thirty
feet aloft.

RAGGI
(Appealing to Jefferson in a shocked tone.)

It will never be noticed. Yes? I shall—chop it?

(Jefferson's only reply is a slow, sympathetic smile and an almost imperceptible
shake of the head. He turns with a smile to the men at
work and at the same time speaks to Brockenbrough.)

JEFFERSON

No holiday, Mr. Brockenbrough, even to welcome Lafayette!

BROCKENBROUGH

Every hour counts so—with all these buildings under way.

JEFFERSON

But it is here our neighbors of Charlottesville are coming to honor Lafayette.

(Brokenbrough dismisses the men with a gesture. Pouring down on
the lawn they clap each other on the back like hulking schoolboys
turned out for the day. Raggi lingers uncertainly. Jefferson extends
a hand to Cornelia.)

My dear, let us give Mr. Brockenbrough the specifications and drawings
we promised him.

CORNELIA
(Opening the big portfolio with immense precision and giving several
drawings to Brockenbrough.)

All except the Temple of Fortuna Virilis. That I have to shade.

JEFFERSON
(Smiling indulgently.)

We are as jealous of presenting our conception in true artistic form as a
Raphael, Mr. Brockenbrough.

(Brockenbrough smiles, too, and bows his thanks to the serious young
artist, but his manner is quite abstracted from the pleasantries of the
moment.)

BROCKENBROUGH
(Anxiously.)

Doesn't the work drag, sir?

JEFFERSON

Why, Mr. Dinsmore is putting up the modillions in his pavilion.

BROCKENBROUGH

At last. But Mr. Perry can't go on with the foundations of his until
he has blasted that rock out of the way. Mr. Ware has not begun to burn
his bricks. And now this! (He touches the capital with the sheaf of drawings.)

JEFFERSON

Remember, Mr. Brockenbrough, we are building not what shall perish
with ourselves but what shall remain to be respected and preserved through
other ages. If we do not finish this year or next or even in our life—

BROCKENBROUGH

But the months pile up so and I want to see the University open.

JEFFERSON

And I—if I might live to see it on its legs, (His voice trails wistfully
into mild humor,)
my bantling of forty years' nursing and growth, ah, then,
my friend, I could sing with serenity my "nunc dimittis."

(Brockenbrough seems much moved. He clears his throat twice and then
abruptly changes the subject.)

BROCKENBROUGH

Shall I have Raggi try to redeem this—

JEFFERSON
(Firmly.)

No.

BROCKENBROUGH

—or put him to helping Gorman hack out those door-sills?

JEFFERSON
(Smiling at Raggi's movement of horror.)

Not on Lafayette's day. Wait. Some of the Visitors of the University
will be here. Let us have their advice.

(Brockenbrough goes off. Raggi comes forward eagerly.)

RAGGI

In Italy, signor, we use such coarse stone only for paving or for—how
do you say?—what the big Gorman hacks out, ah, door-sills. The feet do
not care. But the eyes, signor, the eyes are different. They look up to
the capital. It is the crown of the house. It must be fair. It must be
delicate, white—

(He breaks off with a gesture of despair at the futility of English words.)

CORNELIA

Like clouds.

RAGGI
(Gratefully.)

She understands. The capitals for your beautiful academy, signor,
should be of marble.

JEFFERSON

Marble! (He begins a gesture of negation, but the suggestion plainly
fascinates him. Back of them dawns an other-worldly light. Jefferson looks
straight ahead of him, but his eyes are illumined. Cornelia's gaze, too, seems
to change and soften. Raggi, alone unconscious of the vision, leans absently
against the rejected stone. Shadows move through the radiance behind them,

The Pageant: Jefferson and his Granddaughter

shadows of such figures as might wreathe a Greek vase. There is the sound of
foot-falls as light as falling leaves, a strain of far-heard pipes and timbrels.
Then the shadows vanish, the light fades, and the timbrels are still.)
No, Signor
Raggi, no. Go before you tempt me!

(He paces away along the terrace. Raggi goes off, but Cornelia follows
Jefferson.)

CORNELIA

Marble capitals would be beautiful. (Shadows move again, and then the
lovely shapes that made them, dancers, beautiful, undulating. When they are
gone, Cornelia sighs gently and insists, half in statement, half in puzzled query,
looking up into Jefferson's face.)
And marble would be best. (Jefferson only
smiles at her and leads her back toward the rejected stone where he seats her on
the little campstool which up to now has masqueraded in whimsical wizardry
as Jefferson's cane. She as by habit sits down to begin drawing. Her movements
are absent, and even as her hands busy themselves with the paper her eyes
follow Jefferson. He again walks away along the terrace. When he has reached
the far end, she repeats her puzzled words.)
Marble would be best.

JEFFERSON
(Halting to turn and look back at her as she sits, eyes grave, pencil
poised.)

But, my dear, how the very word would reverberate in legislative halls.
Consider Mr. Cabell.

CORNELIA

Mr. Cabell would not mind. Is it not his "holy cause"? And Mr.
Madison and President Monroe always—

JEFFERSON

Humor me. But—

CORNELIA
(Shutting the portfolio and going to him.)

It is your dream. You cannot make it true with stone too coarse to be
shaped. Think of the Pantheon. When it rises there at the end of your
lifting line of colonnades, must it wear (Her voice breaks)
for its crown
chipped and broken stones?

JEFFERSON

Ah, Cornelia, I am not Pericles with tribute from a chain of subject
states to buy me beauty.

CORNELIA

Just the capitals. Everything else of brick and wood and rough stones.
But the capitals of marble.

(They are standing at the farthest point of the terrace. Jefferson takes
a little notebook from his pocket and computes rapidly, speaking the
while more to himself than to her.)

JEFFERSON

Perhaps thirty all told. A small thing to a great state, something more
than a score of marble capitals. But it would mean—more waiting. I
could hardly hope to live to see it finished, our Athenæum—I have longed
to hear it hum with an ordered throng of youths like those in the antique
poet who sat so seemly as they read their Homer and so lightly ran their
"laps beneath the olive trees."

(Light, far footfalls, pipes and timbrels, moving shadows, and a row
of swaying dancers, hands linked. Two youths come out on the terrace.
One, the younger, runs down upon the grass to dance. The other
drops to the steps where he half reclines as he looks on. Socrates, a
bearded man with a long staff, strolls in and stands meditatively regarding
the dance. Both youths nod to him affectionately; and the
dancer moves in ever-decreasing arcs nearer and nearer to him.)

SOCRATES

The dance of Lysis has a meaning, I suppose, Phædrus, a meaning and
a name?

PHÆDRUS

The Moth-dance.

SOCRATES

And the flame?

PHÆDRUS

You, to be sure. Are you not a purveyor of wisdom?

SOCRATES
(Sitting down and bestowing his draperies comfortably as for a long
talk.)

So it is wisdom the Athenian youth crave.

PHÆDRUS

Indeed. And their fathers for them. Men spend vast sums to get their
sons education.

SOCRATES

What! Exchange solid drachmas for such a vapor! Dear, dear. And
the men who receive all this money, the teachers—I suppose they but sit
and hark to the boys con their Hesiod and Homer.

(Lysis laughs aloud as he drops breathlessly to the steps at Socrates'
feet.)

LYSIS

Oh, Socrates.

PHÆDRUS

Hardly. They must be men of learning and high purpose. Otherwise
the youth would be corrupted.

SOCRATES

True. (He tells off one finger of his uplifted hand.)
Learning and
high purpose granted. Then the father, having found such philosophers
and driven his bargain may go his way in peace. Of course the sages will
seek out the young son, perhaps in the market place, and there, vying
with cackling fowls and hucksters crying their fish and myrtles, they will
press at the youth's elbow and pour wisdom in his ear. —No? Why not?
It is paid for. A bargain is a bargain.

PHÆDRUS
(Moving his shoulders fastidiously.)

But to learn in the noise and dust of the market-place!

SOCRATES

Then where? (Several youths come up. They stand listening while
their attendant crouches apart, as by custom.)
Phædrus here is about to
tell us where it is meet that youth shall be educated.

PHÆDRUS
(In some embarrassment.)

I hardly know. But the place must be beautiful, an academy of cool
colonnades and—

SOCRATES
(Prompting.)

Yes?

PHÆDRUS

And a lawn where (softly quoting)
"the plane-tree whispers to the
linden."

SOCRATES
(Telling off two more fingers.)

A fair colonnade, whispering trees, learned teachers,—then surely the
fathers may be easy now. All the sons will be wise.

(The youths all laugh, and others press nearer. The terrace is filling
with men of various ages, flowingly suggestive, in their easy grouping,
of Raphael's School of Athens. Phædrus springs to his feet in his
eagerness.)

PHÆDRUS

But, Socrates, a great deal depends upon the sons themselves.

SOCRATES

Why, they are only the vessels into which the oil is to be poured.

(Low laughter from the listeners.)

PHÆDRUS

Even so, they must be good vessels, not leaky or—hideous.

(Murmurs of approbation.)

SOCRATES

Beautiful vessels, too! O, Phædrus, how may we hope to make the
students beautiful?

PHÆDRUS

By trainers, of course, by the wrestling-school, by racing, by jumping—

(His words are drowned in the general applause. Socrates, with a
good-natured gesture, admits himself worsted and turns away toward
an elderly man, who promptly rolls up the papyrus he is reading
to make ready for delectable talk. The boys toss off their mantles and
run down upon the lawn. A trainer with his official staff and wearing
a vivid striped mantle selects from the crowding youths a half-dozen
to compete in a race. Slaves with oil-flasks make the contestants
ready. They withdraw to the beginning of the race-course. There is a
hum of eager talk and speculation. A host of youths pour in to see the
sport. They crowd the lawn, but are pressed back from the line of the
race-course by trainers. The contestants come running into view.
Lysis is winner, and is at once caught up and borne back with bravos
to the steps of the terrace to be crowned with laurel by a red-robed judge
waiting there. The enthusiastic crowd presses in upon the little knot
of athletes singing jubilantly:)
(The terrace empties. The youths still singing mount to the slopes
above the amphitheatre. The light on the amphitheatre grows dim,
but the rosy glow holds.)

Interlude

Music in which blend strains familiar to University victory and prowess
in athletics.

(When the music is ending, the light fades. As the amphitheatre brightens
again, Jefferson and Cornelia are seen still standing half-hidden
by shrubbery. A man who is presently to style himself a plain American
citizen, a voter, speaks officiously at Jefferson's very elbow.)
VOTER

Mr. Jefferson.

JEFFERSON
(Startled, recovers himself with an effort.)

Sir, have I had the honor—?

VOTER

You do not know me. I am a plain American citizen, voted for you for
President. I want a word with you.

(Jefferson inclines his head at the implied obligation and gently disengages
Cornelia's hand lying upon his arm.)

JEFFERSON

You will excuse us, my dear?

(Cornelia drops a shy curtsey and goes toward a group of ladies who
have come up from the lawn accompanied by servants with baskets.
One of them greets her.)

WOMAN

Cakes for the banquet—and we have yet to slice them!

CORNELIA

Let me help.

(They go inside.)

VOTER

I admire your political principles, Mr. Jefferson. I respect your age, but
I must tell you that people are very dissatisfied with your building here—
fancy ornaments, foreign labor, extravagance of all kinds—we want more
closets and fewer columns—

(Jefferson paces away from him a few steps and then pauses, his eyes
turned toward the shadowy confines of the lawn.)

JEFFERSON

There are divers minds, sir, and divers modes of thought. That we
should have builded to meet the approbation of every individual was in itself
impossible. We had no supplementary guide but our own judgment.
(His mild voice pauses. Then turning suddenly toward the voter, he puts a period
to the conversation.)
We have builded by our taste, sir, and by our
conscience.

(He bows low with old-fashioned courtesy and goes within. The voter
stands a moment staring after him. Cabell comes up the steps and
passes. He is half across the terrace when a voice halts him. Madison
and Monroe cross the lawn together.)

MADISON

Mr. Cabell!

(The voter recovers himself with a start and puts out his hand toward
Cabell as Cabell is turning back to the steps.)

VOTER

You do not know me. I am a plain American citizen, voted for you
for the legislature—

CABELL
(Bowing rather distantly and attempting to pass.)

Accept my thanks, sir.

VOTER

I want to speak to you about Mr. Jefferson's wastefulness in the building
going on here. There is a good deal of gossip—

CABELL

Gossip, sir! Mr. Jefferson is as indifferent to gossip as Monticello to
summer mists. (Chin up, he passes on to greet Madison and Monroe. They
meet beside the rejected stone and the little camp-stool forgotten there. Cabell's
face relaxes at sight of the stool. He takes it up and folds it carefully.)
The Old
Sachem is here ahead of us.

(The voter goes down to the lawn and off.)

MADISON

Perhaps, as the workmen say, he watches through his telescope the
driving of every nail; and if one is driven falsely, mounts Old Eagle and
comes charging down to right it.

MONROE

Every nail! Ah, sirs, even we, the Visitors, scarcely know the half of
Mr. Jefferson's dreams for the University.

CABELL

Perhaps we should grow faint if we often looked aloft from this material
base, these buildings dearly fought for and not yet completely won,—
aloft to the imagined towers of science he bids us rear.

MADISON
(Musing.)

We talked together, he and I, at Monticello last night—the punch-bowl
half buried in a drift of pages, the gathered dreams of half a century.—

CABELL
(Interrupting in an undertone.)

And such ordered dreams!

MADISON

Exactly. The very books for the library listed as minutely as those
specifications for bricks he daily sets his cramped wrist to draw up. Even
a masterpiece of sound defense for what he calls "our novelties," schools
of Anglo-Saxon, agriculture, government! A packet of letters already
written to precede Mr. Gilmer to Europe on his quest for "characters of
the first order"—

MONROE

We have progressed since the day when Mr. Jefferson laid out the first
building with peg and rule and twine here in Perry's old stubble field.

CABELL

If I could but have made the legislature see the great scale of his vision!

MONROE

You have accomplished much. You will do more.

CABELL
(Sadly.)

I cannot go back another term. My health is quite spent.

MADISON

Poor Old Sachem! Does he know?

CABELL

No. I must tell him to-day.

(A boy dashes across the lawn shouting.)

BOY

He's come! Lafayette has come!

(The sound of drums and processional music. Gaily dressed people
gather on the lawn. From the building come Cornelia and the ladies.
They curtsey to the gentlemen and pass down to the lawn. Down the
center aisle of the amphitheatre and through the lane of people, who
wave handkerchiefs and cheer, passes the procession: the chief marshal
and his aids; the president of the day; magistrates and other local
dignitaries; Lafayette and his staff. A flagbearer carries the flags
of America and France. At the steps, the dignitaries pause and divide
to let Lafayette pass through. Jefferson meets him there. They
embrace, and the cheering mounts to a frenzy. "Lafayette! Lafayette!")


JEFFERSON

God bless you, General!

LAFAYETTE

Ah, Jefferson! (He turns toward the lawn and speaks to the people.)

Even in the old world, I think, I have not seen a work that so clearly speaks
the spirit of the master as this, your Athenæum, speaks of him who has
fathered it. Its white colonnades are yet empty of young life, but a shadow
falls along them daily. Athwart the centuries, so that your sons and their
sons in turn shall walk within it, still will stretch the shadow of the friend
of freedom, of truth, Thomas Jefferson.

(Cheers, "Jefferson! Jefferson!" One voice cries, "The Declaration!"
Jefferson bows his head.)

JEFFERSON

My friends and neighbors, I am old, long in the disuse of making public
speeches, and without voice to utter them—It is my single wish to hear
you acclaim with undivided voice, as but now you did acclaim our great
guest and me, this, our University.

(A straggling voice calls, "The University!" but the crowd stirs with
confusion. The bands begin to play again, and the dignitaries go up
the steps of the terrace. There they form a lane again, and the chief
marshal by gesture invites Lafayette in to the banquet. Lafayette
turns to Jefferson, who stands looking out over the lawn, and offers
him his arm. Jefferson squares his shoulders, smiles affectionately,
and lays his hand within the elbow of the old marquis. With stately
steps they walk together into the banquet hall. Again the crowd cheers.
When the banqueters have gone the throng on the lawn gradually disperses,
some straying in groups upon the terrace to look curiously about.
A woman with her young son at her side pauses in admiration before
the unfinished capital. The voter approaches them. Cornelia, half-hidden
from them by a clump of shrubs on the lawn, stands listening.)

VOTER

I suppose you'd call that beautiful.

WOMAN

Why, no—it is still so rough—but it suggests beauty.

VOTER

H'm. More useless finery, fancy folderols, expensive toys for a man in
his dotage.

A MAN
(Coming up to them.)

Is it true that Mr. Jefferson will have no professors here but foreigners
—and Unitarians?

(The hum of voices swells and the stragglers foregather.)

VOTER

I don't doubt it. No one really knows what religion he believes in himself.

MAN

And he did get a lot of foreign notions when he lived abroad.

WOMAN

Ah, you are all swift to detract.

HER SON
(Tensely.)

But I heard you cheering, "Jefferson! Jefferson!"

WOMAN

Hush, my son.

(From the banquet hall comes an orator's voice rounding a period:
"—the friend of freedom," and then the sound of applause.)

VOTER

But, my boy, that is the thing to do, to cheer when public men stand
before us. I voted for Thomas Jefferson for President, but when it comes to
emptying out my pockets, why, that is different.

BYSTANDERS

Very different—. Indeed—. —especially for pagan professors and
un-American buildings.

VOTER

Of course it was not our business if he chose to throw away a lifetime
and a fortune on building his own house. Monticello—

(Raggi pushes through the ring of listeners and interrupts.)

RAGGI

Monticello? Ah, the fair, the serene house. Long after the flimsy shelters
in your valley lie rotted it will stand in beauty—so art endures, signori
and signore—on the breast of its little mountain.

(A breath of silence, during which Raggi picks up his chisel, left forgotten
on the stone.)

MAN

And who is he?

VOTER
(Shrugging his shoulders and turning to go down the steps.)

An importation of Mr. Jefferson's—from Italy.

(The circle breaks up and the people drift away. Raggi, leaving, is
stopped by Cornelia coming up from the lawn, portfolio in her arms.)

CORNELIA

If you please. I want to show you the drawing of the library, the great
building to stand at the head of the lawn. (She opens the portfolio on the
capital, and Raggi gives a low exclamation of pure delight.)
Do you recognize
it?

RAGGI

Recognize it? Ah!

CORNELIA

It will be smaller—

RAGGI

Of a certainty. But the proportions! The perfect round. Have you
seen it, the temple of all the gods? You have been to Italy, to Rome itself?
You know the Pantheon?

CORNELIA
(Wistfully, shaking her head.)

Only pictures. (She watches him study the drawing.)
Would rough
capitals spoil it?

RAGGI

Rough capitals? A thing impossible. They must be of marble.

(With a gesture of finality he turns abruptly away. She follows.)

CORNELIA

But of course there are different sorts of marble, some smoother than
others, whiter, some—

RAGGI

Ah, if we were but in Italy! There is the perfect marble, flawless like
untracked snow.

CORNELIA

It is—?

RAGGI

Carrara.

CORNELIA

Oh. Carrara.

(Satisfied, she turns to tie the portfolio again, and, when Raggi has gone,
sits down on the steps, her chin on her palms. Jefferson comes from
the banquet hall.)

JEFFERSON

Cornelia, you are waiting for me? But you will grow tired. Men love
talk like old wine.

CORNELIA

Shall you have a chance to speak to the Visitors of the University?

JEFFERSON

When the meat is served. We are to come here. But you must not
wait, my child. Are you delaying your carriage until the file winds up to
Monticello so that I may be your cavalier? I am but a grizzled outrider, and
Eagle an ancient mount—

CORNELIA

Listen. I have found what kind of marble we want for the capitals, the
smoothest, the whitest, the best—Carrara.

JEFFERSON
(Suddenly serious, taking her chin in his hand to study her eyes.)

My dear, we can but try. I will ask our Visitors.

(Jefferson and Cornelia separate, he going with bowed head back to
the banquet hall and she stealing softly down to the lawn.)
(Light dawns upon the terrace. Phædrus, in short, dun-colored cape
and little hard, round hat slung about his neck, comes out between
Socrates and Lysis. He wears a new and strange appearance which
cannot be entirely attributable to his clothes, although they are of
course both new and strange. It is rather a matter of lifted chin and a
far-off gaze. Lysis presses very close to him, looking up into his face
and now and then feeling the stuff of his cape. Socrates smiles whimsically
at the two of them.)

SOCRATES

Lysis, I think you are envying Phædrus. But the life of training he has
begun is rigorous. Surely you do not crave that ugly uniform. (Lysis
laughs and shakes his head.)
Or the close-cropped head? No? Perhaps
it is the mad revels of the young men, their societies of mystic names?
Nor these? Then perhaps the shield and spear Phædrus will have from the
state—and the dangers he will soon go out to encounter on the frontier?

LYSIS

Oh, no, Socrates.

SOCRATES

Then it is the sacred oath he swore just now in the sanctuary. (Lysis
not denying this, but instead looking eagerly toward him, Socrates drops his
humorous tone and speaks very gently.)
Ah, Lysis, do you suppose that you
must wait for a day and year to take an oath as sacred? Or that temples
alone can consecrate high purpose? This rough stone be your altar. Phædrus,
here, and I, your friends, will speak a prayer with you, and like good
comrades claim a share in the blessings it brings.

PHÆDRUS

But, Socrates, men say you do not believe in the gods.

SOCRATES

And you, who are my friend, who talk with me daily, how do you answer
them in your heart? Do you say, Socrates believes the sun a stone, he
has no faith in what is divine?

PHÆDRUS

No. But the men who are so clamorous to pass the sentence of death
upon you are not your friends. They declare you never sacrifice to the gods
of the state—

SOCRATES

Hush. It is sacrilege to give God to our little Attic state. Pray with
Lysis. Ask with him the dearest wish of his heart.

PHÆDRUS

Ah, I know what that will be—honor.

SOCRATES

Is that so, Lysis? Do you yearn above all things for truth? (Lysis
nods. The two youths stand by the rough stone and pray after Socrates.)
O,
Pallas, glorious goddess, keeper of wisdom,—

PHÆDRUS AND LYSIS

O, Pallas, glorious goddess, keeper of wisdom,—

SOCRATES

—give me beauty in my inward soul. May I be brave.

PHÆDRUS AND LYSIS

—give me beauty in my inward soul. May I be brave.

SOCRATES

And then, Athena, send me truth.

PHÆDRUS AND LYSIS

And then, Athena, send me truth.

(Socrates moves away, leaving Phædrus and Lysis. Phædrus, taking a
scroll from his tunic, sits down to read in it. After a moment Lysis
slips to a lower step and drops down quietly. He hugs his knees boy-fashion
and bends over to sniff delicately at the beautiful papyrus.)

LYSIS

Oil of sandalwood. Mmmm.

PHÆDRUS
(Thinking aloud.)

It would be splendid to be a poet, to speak truth, but half-knowing
how—yet easily, as the smilax climbs.

LYSIS

I have thought of that.

PHÆDRUS

After this (touching his uniform)
, I may try it,—try putting into starry
words the beauty that lumps in my throat.

LYSIS
(Reproachfully.)

But you were going to be a master artisan and fashion wings for us.
You said it would be simple to fly.

PHÆDRUS

Simple? Even the seagulls know as much, poising surely between blue
and blue in the wake of tall triremes.

LYSIS
(Still reproachfully.)

And only this morning you talked of founding a great world state so
that there might be an end of wars and all the oppressed should be free.

PHÆDRUS

Who can tell? (Moonlight silvers the façade beyond the terrace and
streaks the floor with light and shadow. A fair Athenian girl in shimmering
fabrics with garlands of unreal silver flowers stands a moment in a path of light.
Phædrus, spying her, springs to his feet, hand outstretched. Startled, she
vanishes before Lysis, leaping up and looking back, has seen her.)
It was
Helen!

LYSIS

How could you know?

PHÆDRUS

By her beauty. Was it not the glory of Greece? I have seen her in a
thousand dreams flash white-armed along these moon-barred colonnades.

(Again the girl appears. This time it is Lysis who sees her. He cries
aloud and runs toward her. She eludes him. He pursues and overtakes
her. But she breaks away and leaves him with empty arms

---

77

staring at the moon-lines on the floor. Soft music, and then the voice
of song:)
(The girl comes slowly out into the light again. Lysis meets her and
they dance of the love that comes to youth in dreams, mystic, evanescent.
At last she slips away. He follows. Other maidens come and dance
on the lawn; and the dance drifts into joyous revelry. They go off
laughing, Phædrus in their midst. The moonlight endures.)

INTERLUDE

Music, in which blend strains associated with University revels and
dancing.

(The amphitheatre grows bright again. The door of the banquet hall
opens, loosing a hum of general talk and laughter and the clink of
silver upon china. Jefferson comes out resting his hand affectionately
upon Cabell's shoulder.)
JEFFERSON

Whether to ask remission of our debt or funds for the library? The
latter, oh, surely, my friend, the latter. Were we to stop building now and
open our doors, we should fully satisfy the common sort of mind. And so
we should then be forced to proceed forever upon that low level.

CABELL

I have said we must never again ask money for building—but it is my
chief happiness to please you, in the little time I have left.

JEFFERSON
(Starting away from him.)

The little time?

CABELL

I am quite unable to stand for reëlection.

JEFFERSON

Desert now your holy labors! Think—one life you have. Can you
spend it better? The host of young in the years ahead depend for the freedom
of their souls upon our sacrifice of time, health, even life—(His voice
breaks, but he tries to go on.)
If you continue not firm-breasted, how shall
I without vigor of body or mind—

CABELL
(Stopping him.)

It is not in my nature to resist such an appeal.

JEFFERSON
(Again dropping his hand on Cabell's shoulder.)

My friend, my friend! —You will announce your candidacy?

CABELL

In the next issue of the Enquirer.

VOTER
(Coming up to them from the lawn.)

The talk I mentioned to you, Mr. Jefferson, has reached a head to-day.
The people gathered here are very dissatisfied. When they come together
again to see Lafayette come out, you should speak to them, explain this
rumor—

CABELL
(Frigidly.)

A rumor, sir?

VOTER

That these fancy capitals are an utter failure.

CABELL

More gossip, sir.

JEFFERSON

Gently, my friend. We are physicians unenviably prescribing a
draught nauseous to the public. (Turning to the voter.)
You are correct in
supposing us to have made mistakes, but we prefer to make no speeches. I

have found in a long life that the approbation of the public denied in the
beginning will surely follow right action in the end. Time dissipates these
mists of prejudice. We are building for those who are to come after us.
They will know whether we have builded well or ill. It is from posterity
that we expect remuneration (extending his hand toward the far boundaries of
the lawn)
, and I fear not the appeal. (The voter goes off as he came.)
It is
true, Mr. Cabell. Our Italian artist to-day spoiled this stone. (He turns
in greeting to Madison and Monroe as they come out of the banquet hall.)
Your
feasting with Lafayette has been interrupted, sirs, by the claims of your
office as Visitors of the University. Your rector needs advice. Signor Raggi
has decided, after all, that Corinthian capitals can never be faithfully carved
from such coarse stone. Shall we in the absence of our colleagues, the other
Visitors, arrest his work?

MONROE

By all means.

MADISON

Pay his passage back to Leghorn if need be. He is hardly more popular
than useful.

JEFFERSON

And the capitals? (The other men are silent, waiting for him to go on.)

We shall still have to get capitals. (He takes the notebook from his pocket and,
consulting it, speaks in deliberate, matter-of-fact tones.)
I have made computations.
Capitals are relatively cheap in Italy. They understand there
doing these things more expeditiously than we. We can have at a reasonable
figure—less than we have already spent in experiment—capitals of
flawless marble.

MADISON

Marble!

CABELL

And imported! Consider the legislature, Mr. Jefferson.

MONROE

Think how delays goad the public impatience.

JEFFERSON
(As if he has not heard.)

These colonnades will shelter the visions of unnumbered hosts, young
Lockes, Newtons, even Lafayettes brave for right. Here the fledgling poet
shall sense the law of austere beauty which Homer knew, and boy Ciceros
learn to strip their raw fancies from the chaste, compelling truth—

(He breaks off. There is a little silence, and then Madison taking a
step forward speaks to Cabell and Monroe.)

MADISON

Thomas Jefferson is the father of the University of Virginia. It is the
very shadow of his great self. He alone can know how its spirit must be
bodied forth. Let us not deny him one stone.

MONROE

Jefferson, you must decide.

(He seizes Jefferson's hand and wrings it warmly. The others follow
his example and go at once back toward the banquet hall.)

JEFFERSON

But your advice—I need your advice—your help—

CABELL

You are an infinitely better judge than we.

(They go in. Jefferson stands alone staring down at the rejected stone,
his notebook still in his hand. Brockenbrough comes up from the
lawn.)

BROCKENBROUGH

You saw the Visitors?

JEFFERSON

Yes.

BROCKENBROUGH

About Raggi, I mean.

JEFFERSON

About Raggi? Yes.

BROCKENBROUGH

What did they decide, sir? Is he to go on spoiling good material?

JEFFERSON

No. Oh, no. We must have no more good material spoiled, Mr.
Brockenbrough. (His abstraction is so deep that he seems not to notice Brockenbrough's
restless shifting of position.)
We must stop Raggi from spoiling
good material. They were clear about that.

BROCKENBROUGH

And the capitals? How shall we finish the columns?

JEFFERSON

They told me to decide—but I am very tired—It would take a long
time to bring capitals from Italy, Mr. Brockenbrough.

BROCKENBROUGH

A good many months, I should suppose, and a clumsy job at best.
Even after they are dumped off at New York, they would have to be got to
Richmond, and, after that, long, tedious hauls by batteaux and wagons.
It would delay us indefinitely.

JEFFERSON

Months and months.

BROCKENBROUGH
(With sudden sympathy.)

Why worry now, sir? You've had a long day. You can discharge
Raggi to-morrow—and then think about the capitals.

JEFFERSON

To-morrow. I will decide to-morrow.

(Brockenbrough goes off hat in hand. From the banquet hall comes
Lafayette.)

LAFAYETTE

Jefferson. My friend.

JEFFERSON

Lafayette, Lafayette, the years press sensibly on our shoulders. How
long since your shield covered this neighborhood from the ravages of Cornwallis!
How long since you brought your band of patriots to my house in
Paris to wish a constitution! History has turned many chapters since then,
of Robespierre, Barras, Bonaparte and the Bourbons.

LAFAYETTE

Many chapters indeed, Jefferson.

JEFFERSON
(Walking away, head bowed.)

Replete with intrigue, dark with death.

LAFAYETTE
(Following.)

But on every page the bright recurrent phrase.

JEFFERSON

The bright phrase?

LAFAYETTE

You ask! You who in young manhood wrote, all men are free; and now
in the ripeness of age make them this material pledge. (His gesture includes
the buildings and lawn.)

JEFFERSON

Freedom.

LAFAYETTE

A fair flag for the young crusaders to be nurtured here.

(The chief marshal comes out of the banquet hall and looks about him.
Lafayette, at the far end of the terrace, presses Jefferson's two hands
in silence and joins the marshal. They go back into the banquet hall.)

JEFFERSON

Young Lafayettes brave for truth.

(A shadowy figure slips in and kneels beside the rejected stone. Then
comes Socrates, hands behind him, face lifted, intent upon absorbing
reverie. Back of him is Phædrus with shield and spear. They are
almost upon the kneeling youth when Phædrus, seeing him, lays his
hand upon Socrates' arm.)

SOCRATES

What, Lysis! Still at the altar of truth? (As Lysis lifts grief-stricken
eyes, his tone of raillery softens into tender reproach.)
Ah, my son, you grieve.

PHÆDRUS
(In a low tone.)

Because I am ordered to the frontier and you are to be tried, Lysis is
sure I shall be killed and you condemned.

SOCRATES

Lysis, I was condemned to die from the hour of my birth. My judges
can but fix the time of my setting forth. Look, is tranquil sleep a boon or a
curse?

LYSIS
(Rising and never taking his eyes from Socrates' face.)

A boon, of course.

SOCRATES

Or if, as some say, we live on after death, would not Phædrus joyfully
go to meet the heroes of old—Palamedes and Ajax, the son of Telamon?
Think, Lysis, what could he not learn of Orpheus or of Homer.

LYSIS
(Lifting his arms, as though they were winged and he would take flight.)

Truth itself.

PHÆDRUS

And how they would tell it!

Greek Dancing at the Pageant

SOCRATES

You see. The hour is neither here nor there. Would not you yourself,
Lysis, who are yet young, this moment gladly die, if you so might lighten,
a little, men's load of tyranny and error?

LYSIS

Gladly—Oh!

(Far off a trumpet sounds and then the tread of marching feet. A
company of youths with shields and spears passes along and Phædrus
silently joins them. Lysis, lifting his arms high above his head, leaps
down the steps to dance upon the grass. He dances, not the freedom of
nature but the blood-bought liberty of peoples, to music which is martial
and splendid. Socrates watches him and then goes away, stopping
once or twice to look back at him. Dancers in deep blue come in. The
recurrent poses of their dance suggest a frieze or the pediment of some
Greek temple. When their dance is ended Lysis rushes up the steps
and pauses there, arms uplifted as though he would actually take flight.
Again there are trumpets. He drops his arms and marches away at
the head of the martial company.)
(The doors of the banquet hall are thrown open, and there floats forth a
confusion of talk and the scraping of chairs. The flag-bearer comes
out, but, finding himself a little premature, halts suddenly and stands
looking back almost hidden by the mingled folds of the two flags. The
nearly level light throws a long diagonal shadow across the terrace,
enveloping Jefferson. Lafayette comes out. He pauses once at the
very spot where Lysis stood a moment earlier, and the sunlight falls
startlingly upon him and the mingled flags behind him. The banqueters
coming out in confusion fill the terrace, and crowds on the
lawn press near the steps. A fragment of cheering struggles up, but
clamor drowns it. Lafayette goes down the steps with his staff, folowed
by the local dignitaries; and the people push in behind them.
Jefferson is left alone. From the shadow on the lawn pass workmen
homeward bound singing softly:)
(Jefferson hurries after them along the terrace, calling.)

JEFFERSON

Gorman, oh, Gorman!

GORMAN

Yes, Mr. Jefferson?

JEFFERSON

Has Signor Raggi gone?

GORMAN

No, Mr. Jefferson.

(Jefferson has stopped in the light; and its glow falls full upon his face
turned toward Gorman down on the lawn.)

JEFFERSON

Then send him to me.

(Gorman goes back. There is a light, deepening to brilliance, and the
sound of flutes in processional drawing nearer and nearer. A girl
comes out and dances, and after her Athenian maidens bearing green
palm fronds. They dance on the grass and then sweep the rejected
stone and the steps with their branches. The flutes are at hand, and
the players appear. After them come other groups in sacred processional:
high-born maidens carrying aloft painted jars of oil and golden
vases of wine; old men with olive-boughs; athletes wearing coronals
of victory; and attendants of the temple, some with long garlands of
flowers for the altar and some with trays and baskets of sacrificial
loaves and fruit. From the slopes above the amphitheatre come the
host of Athenian youths in ordered march filling the lawn in great
semicircles. They carry unlighted torches. At last the priestess of
Athena walks slowly forth to stand beside the stone. An attendant
brings her the lustral bowl. She bathes her hands. Attendants offer
fagots. She kindles a fire and prays.)

PRIESTESS

Cleanse us of error, great daughter of Jove.

(As the fire leaps into flame, Lysis draws near in the last measures of
the Moth-dance. The priestess gives a torch into his hand. He runs
down and kindles the torch in the hands of a youth near the steps.
The light travels from hand to hand until the whole lawn is ablaze with
torches. The youths sing:)
(Still singing, carrying torches aloft, led by Lysis, they march up the
steps and through the central doorway of the building. Group by
group, the worshipers follow. The priestess, when they have all gone,
pours a perfumed libation on the fire, quenching the flame, and herself
follows. The last sound of the recessional is the echo of flutes.)
(A group of workmen passes. Jefferson hurries toward them into the
light, but then he pauses, waiting. Another group passes. Then
come Gorman and Raggi.)

RAGGI
(Cap in hand, below the steps.)

You wanted me, signor?

(Gorman goes on by.)

JEFFERSON

Yes, Raggi. I have decided.

CORNELIA
(Coming out of the shrubs at the other side of the steps.)

Are you never coming?

JEFFERSON

Ah, my child, is Wild Air impatient?

CORNELIA

Wild Air! Why, dear, Wild Air belonged to White House days. I can
hardly remember him. Don't you know—you ride Eagle now.

JEFFERSON

Yes, yes, Eagle, Old Eagle. (He straightens himself. The sunset light
deepens in color upon his face.)
Raggi, I have decided. You shall be our
agent to buy capitals in Italy.

RAGGI

In Italy. Of marble, signor? It is so firm to the chisel.

CORNELIA
(Softly, hands to her breast.)

Marble of Carrara?

JEFFERSON

White marble from the quarries of Carrara.

(Raggi goes off, and Cornelia turns away. Jefferson comes down the
steps to the lawn, his shadow yet a moment lying in the last path of
light.)