University of Virginia Library

III
CALCULUS AND CALICO
1888-1889

Dic cur hic? WHAT IS THY ERRAND HERE?-IS THE QUESTION that is asked a student who seeks to enter a German university. Had it been put to me the first time I stood on the threshold of the University of Virginia, perhaps I might have answered, a little grandiloquently yet not quite untruth fully, that I came in quest of knowledge and wisdom. Certainly I should never have confessed that what attracted me most and supplied the strongest motive was the romance and glamour of college life of which I had heard so many tales beforehand painted in glowing colours. Never before or since was my zeal for learning at such a low ebb as it was during the whole of that first year in college when I lived on Monroe Hill and tasted the pleasures of academic life as they were enjoyed in that carefree community. Not that I neglected my studies entirely or failed to burn a reasonable portion of "midnight oil," sometimes indeed with a great show of industry particularly on a night before a hard examination; but luckily enough I was pretty well fortified in Greek and Mathematics before I got to the University, and it did not take much effort to keep abreast of my classes without being conspicuous one way or the other either as "curler" or "corker," that is, in the current vernacular, either as a bright

particular star in the firmament or as a sacrificial lamb led to the slaughter.

It was a novel and sensational experience to be my own master, free from control. Day by day the circle of my acquaintance was enlarged, and I was never at a loss for agreeable and congenial companions. Some of my comrades, mostly among the older students, were distinctly superior in both culture and talents or in some other way that commanded my homage and admiration, and by association with them I reaped advantages that were not to be reckoned lightly in the scale of useful education. In more than one instance a staunch and enduring friendship was cemented then that not all the vicissitudes of life have ever sundered.

With all the zest of a new recruit I sought to take part in the exciting game of college politics as it was played then for all it was worth; and while at first I was no better than an insignificant pawn among the other pieces in the contest, I was eager to win my spurs with the hope of becoming a knight one day, though of course I never dreamed of running for any such high office as that of Final President of the Jefferson Literary Society, considered to be the greatest prize that was conferred by the student body on one of its members. In that year 1888-89, the rival candidates were George Gordon Battle of North Carolina and J. R. A. Hobson of Richmond, both "Eli Banana's" and unquestionably the two most prominent and popular leaders in college. Gordon Battle was a brilliant fellow who got the degree of Master of Arts that session, magna cum laude, and "Reid Hobson," as he was known all over the campus, was facile princeps in every vocation of college life except scholarship, for which alone he manifested no marked predilection. My recollection is that Reid tried three years, and tried in vain, to get a diploma in the School of Latin; yet, to do him justice, I for one never believed the story that it was he who translated Canis vigilavit noctem per totam, "The dog watched the night through a hole." Reid and I had been schoolmates together in McGuire's

School in Richmond, but he was two or three years my senior, and now he was a high priest in the proud ATO fraternity, while I was naught but a newly baptized DKE, lowly in rank as compared with him who led all the Germans and was indeed In those days no old friendship could overcome the political antagonism of "Deke's" and ATO's, and so as a matter of course I was enlisted under the banner of Gordon Battle in that campaign, if for no other reason than simply because he was the champion of the side that was opposed to the ascendency of the ATO's.

Gordon Battle was elected, and shortly before the end of the session the victor gave a famous beer party in House E on Dawson's Row in celebration of his triumph, to which friend and foe alike were invited. It was a jovial affair not confined to Dawson's Row and Monroe Hill, for the sound of revelry by night could be heard on Carr's Hill also and indeed wherever two or three were gathered together. In an upstairs room in House E, Tom Gordon presided over a huge punch bowl on a table in front of him, surrounded by a mob that cheered every word that he uttered. His only garment was a loose-fitting dressing gown which fluttered in the breeze that came through the open window behind him, and Bacchus himself could not have worn it with more abandon. As Tom harangued his audience, gesticulating vehemently with a big ladle in one hand and a pound-bag of Lone Jack tobacco in the other hand, suddenly in the midst of a great flourish he launched backwards and vanished through the window into outer darkness! (The lower sill of the window was just a few inches above the level of the floor.) Consternation and dismay were written on every face, for Tom's neck could easily have been broken by that fall. I tried to elbow my way through the crowd and reach the door in order to go to his aid, but ere I could do so, Tom himself was heard ascending the

stairs, and a moment later there he stood in our midst again still waving the ladle and the bag of tobacco above his head and still talking at the top of his lungs as if his oration had never been interrupted. The only visible change in his appearance was a long rent in the dressing gown, but fortunately it was a warm evening in May when exposure to the weather can be borne with impunity.

College politics was diverting enough while it lasted, but the excitement died down as soon as the votes were all counted and victory perched on one banner or the other. It was mild and transient as compared with the hot and incessant pursuit of "Calico," which was the name of another game to which many of us were addicted. "Calico" was the endearing, if somewhat disrespectful, term we used to employ in speaking of that considerable portion of humanity that to our fathers was known as "the fair sex, as it is in one sense if not in the other. The origin of the name was traced to the days soon after the end of the Civil War when for some years (so it is said) young ladies in Virginia had to be content to wear calico frocks be cause their sires could not afford to buy silks and satins for them; but whether this explanation is true or false, it is certain that calico never "cramped their style" or detracted from their irresistible charm. When the site of the University of Virginia was chosen, it may be supposed that the idea of "Calico" as a useful adjunct and ancillary equipment of the new institution did not enter the mind of the illustrious founder; yet it is an historical fact that from that day to this perhaps no place in the world has been more famous for beautiful women than the county of Albemarle and particularly the little town of Charlottesville on the Rivanna in full view of Monticello. Certainly in my day and generation a student was a hopeless bookworm and an odd fellow indeed who did not have a sweetheart in a bower close enough for him to get a glimpse of her nearly every day, and to take her to church on Sunday unless perchance she gave him the slip and got another beau for that ostentatious occasion.

Goodness knows that in the valley of humiliation there are cold and haughty girls almost like goddesses whom we worship from afar without ever daring to touch the hems of their garments, and whose fascination is enchanting as their. loveliness is supreme and unchallenged. Fortunately, for cravens like me, there are other girls also, dear and lovable and pretty as can be, who gaze up in your eyes and listen to you as if an oracle were speaking, applaud all your fine speeches and pretend at any rate to believe that you are a hero, and whom you long to clasp in your arms. Well, there were girls of both kinds in Charlottesville and the adjacent country, and a fellow had to be mighty fastidious and hard to please who could not find one among them who for the time being was without doubt the most delightful creature in the wide, wide world.

No Chinese mandarin was more dignified and stately in both manner and appearance than old Henry Martin, the head janitor, who tolled the big bell in the rotunda that summoned us to our lectures. It was a signal which we heeded and generally obeyed; yet if by chance, and without meaning any harm on earth, a demure little college belle with bright blue eyes and maybe a dimple in her cheek came strolling down the arcade at that very moment when Simple Simon was on his way to lecture, just as likely as not she would detain him for a minute, unintentionally of course, never dreaming, of leading him into temptation. Under such circumstances I have known him to turn aside from the path of duty and go arm in arm with her in the opposite direction; yet who can say that that eager lad did not learn more that day about electricity and magnetism than if he had sat conscientiously through Professor Smith's learned lecture in Senior Natural Philosophy, as perhaps I myself might have been doing all that blessed hour?

In "the academic village," as it was originally designed by Mr. Jefferson, no building was set apart as a "recreation centre" for the students, nor as far as I know was there any provision for a

playground or even a rude gymnasium such as was afterwards constructed at one end of East Range. When I was in college, not a single fraternity house was then in existence, the nearest thing to it being the little one-storey cottage on Carr's Hill where the Dekes used to hold their Saturday night meetings and munch cheese and crackers washed down their gullets by potations of beer or claret taken more or less indiscriminately. The only places where the students could assemble to have a mass meeting were in the not very spacious halls of the two literary societies or possibly in a comparatively small chamber over the post office opposite Olivier's Bookshop and Chancellor's Drugstore, which was the headquarters of Mrs. Cochran's old Temperance Union. Downtown there were no theatres or bowling alleys, only a couple of disreputable saloons where a few students of the baser sort sometimes congregated to play billiards and ran imminent risk of being expelled from College.

There were no public vehicles for hire, not even a one-horse streetcar that would have saved us from having to walk a mile or more to Dr. Norris's dental office on Market Street whenever a tooth had to be pulled or a swollen jaw was in need of a poultice. Then the telephone had not been invented, and it was impossible to communicate with the dentist soon after breakfast and make an appointment with him for that afternoon. I remember well trudging to his office early one cold winter morning after having been kept awake all night long by a painful abscess and much to my annoyance finding two other patients ahead of me already waiting to see the executioner. Colonel Venable and Major Peyton were seated opposite each other in the reception room, each with his arms folded tightly across his breast, both so glum and taciturn that neither bestowed on me more than a civil nod of recognition when I entered and took a chair in a corner of the room. It was a dismal place at best, made more so by the oppressive silence and solemnity of the company that were assembled there that morning. Presently Dr. Norris flung open the door of the torture chamber, and bowing impartially

to each of the two elderly gentleman in turn, intimated that it was for the in to decide whose tooth should be pulled first. Those redoubtable heroes had seen many blood-stained battlefields; yet it seemed to me that Dr. Norris and his forceps-sapped their courage until it was really not much better than mine. The Colonel bowed stiffly towards the Major, the Major glared angrily at the Colonel, and then one of them, I forget which, rose from his chair and stalked into the other room with as firm -a tread as he could muster for the occasion. The door closed gently behind him, and again all was silence, broken presently by what sounded like a groan from purgatory on the other side of the intervening wall. Then about a minute later the door opened again and a muffled figure brushed past me and vanished through the other door into the street without a word of adieu. I continued to wait patiently while the other gentleman went through the same ordeal, and when my time came, as come it did at last, I believe I met my fate with no less fortitude, only by that time nobody was left to witness it.

If God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, it is He also who teaches us to be content with our lot. The truth is that in the days of my youth it never entered my head to think that my lot was hard or dull. If the appliances and modern facilities for alleviating it were lacking, I was blissfully ignorant of them and certainly never missed them. I will not say that the Kingdom of Heaven was within us, for we were just as troublesome and unregenerate as any boys that ever lived on earth before or since, but the word ennui was not in the lexicon of my youth. My chief difficulty was to steal enough time from frivolous occupations in order to read a page of Thucydides before going to bed at night or maybe to explore a mysterious problem in Williamson's Differential Calculus in the vain hope of solving it and "curling" in class next day. Certainly my conscience, little as I heeded it, reproached me for leaving undone those things that above all ought to have been done. However, the only point I am emphasizing now is that even if Mr. Corcoran or some other

bountiful benefactor of those ancient days, in anticipation of modern requirements in education, had built and equipped a "recreation centre" for us equal to the finest in the land today, it is doubtful whether either I or Snowden Marshall or any other of my boon companions would have had a leisure interval day or night in which to patronize and enjoy it.

Colonel Venable's classroom in Mathematics, which he shared with Colonel Peters in Latin, was on the west side of the main floor of the rotunda. The teacher sat on a platform opposite the door, and the benches for the students were arranged in front of him in concentric semi-circular tiers ascending higher and higher towards the back of the room. The principal textbooks in Mathematics were Snowball's Plane and Spherical Trigonometry (a scholarly and awfully solemn book); Puckle's Conic Sections (in its way a work of genius that has never been surpassed); Todhunter's Differential and Integral Calculus and Williamson's ditto, each in two volumes; a posthumous treatise on Calculus in general (published in 1874) by Edward H. Courtenay, LL.D., who had been professor of Mathematics in the University of Virginia in ante bellum days; and, finally, a very indigestible little volume on Solid Analytic Geometry which had leaped from Colonel Venable's own head. Even now I cannot recall that last book without an involuntary shudder. It is in my library still; yet when I happened to glance through it the other day, in the light of riper knowledge, far from inspiring hatred and all uncharitableness as it used to do in that first year in college, it met me as if it were a long-lost friend and with such in air of sweet reasonableness that it was hard to believe it had once been my inveterate enemy. Most of the textbooks in Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, etc., were solid English fare brewed and concocted in Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

My recollection is that not more than a score of students were in the class of Senior Mathematics in the session 1888-89; among

whom I recall distinctly C. R. Beattie, W. Harrison Blair, Mallory K. Cannon, Joseph B. Dunn, H. Snowden Marshall, Harrison Randolph (of Charlottesville), Thomas J. Randolph (of Edgehill), E. Randolph Williams, and Robert F. Whitehead. Our love and admiration of Colonel Venable, sincere and generous as it was, could not hide the truth that then he was no longer an inspiring teacher, as I believe he certainly was in his prime. We were late comers to sit at his feet, and, it must be confessed, with the conspicuous exceptions of Harrison Randolph and Bob Whitehead, a group of not very apt or enthusiastic disciples. I got the impression that nobody was more bored than Colonel Venable himself; yet occasionally when a famous mathematical problem came up for discussion such, for example, as that of finding the path of quickest descent from the higher to the lower of two given points at different levels, subject to the action of gravity only and the constraint of the curve, a sudden burst of enthusiasm would arouse Colonel Venable and the contagion might even spread to the benches in front of him. It was almost a dramatic scene that day when he leaped from his chair and scrawled the equation of the "brachistochrone" on the blackboard in a handwriting that no mortal man could decipher. Being an inquisitive chap, I went to his desk after class and humbly besought him to unravel those hieroglyphics, but by that time the Colonel's ardour had subsided, and he himself could not interpret his own writing. It was something of an anticlimax for me to find afterwards, by patient study, that the much vaunted curve with its Greek name was after all no more than an ordinary cycloid.

Vague and unreliable as my memory is now of my studies under Colonel Venable, I know how constantly we stood in dread of being "sent to the board" where each of us in turn was usually exposed in all his mathematical ignorance. One trivial incident, scarcely connected at all with the mysterious operations of Calculus only it happened to occur in Colonel Venable's classroom, comes to mind after all the intervening years. One morning

just before the hour for the lecture, I had been in Olivier's Bookshop where I learned that Grover Cleveland had been defeated for re-election as president of the United States and that an obscure gentleman from Indiana by the name of Benjamin Harrison had been chosen in his stead. In those days we were all ardent Cleveland supporters, and I heard the bad news with a heavy heart, Thus it happened I was two or three minutes late in getting to the lecture-room that day where the class was all assembled when I took my seat. Harrison Blair sat on the front row as usual with his notebook spread open before him and was conscientiously employed in taking down Colonel Venable's Ipsissima Verba -for such was the title inscribed in large letters on the outside cover of that precious record. Harrison was a faithful scribe, and all of us depended on him more or less for an accurate report of the transactions. I wrote on a scrap of paper, "All is over with poor old Grover," and addressing the message to Harrison, handed the folded paper to somebody in the next row to be duly transmitted from one student to another until it reached the proper destination. Now my friend Harrison Blair was what I suppose Mr. W. S. Gilbert might have called "a matter-of-fact young man," little given to frivolity, much less addicted to ars poetica; yet he had an ear for rhythm, could scan a verse, and tell at once when the metre was false. He pored over my note quite a long interval, and I could see from my seat far off to one side that his brow was puckered and that he was in deep thought. Presently a faint smile lighted his countenance, he picked up his pencil and, adding just a single word to my note, sent it back to me along the same circuitous route. When I unfolded the paper, I read the corrected version, as follows: "All is now over with poor old Grover!" Naturally there was nothing more to be said, and that ended the brief correspondence. It is strange that this episode lingers clear in my memory now when so much that might be interesting to recall is blotted out entirely.

Even more distinct is the memory of -that awfully hot day in

early July when I was almost the sole inhabitant left on Monroe Hill, bound fast by the hard labour of preparing for the final examination in Intermediate Mathematics, for graduation in that school depended on this class also. It was Friday, and the examination was due to be field next day, the last day of the session before the baccalaureate sermon on Sunday, which was the "opening gun" of The Finals, as our commencement was called. The class was an unusually large one, and on that account the examination had been deliberately postponed to the latest possible minute, simply in order to prevent an exodus from college of a considerable number of students who were tempted to go home as soon as they had completed their required tasks without staying for The Finals. The usual gaiety of the season was already in full swing all over the campus and in town and county also. Naught but a slender picket fence separated me from Mr. Thornton's front yard which was a scene of festivity and mirth right before my eyes. Two of Richmond's renowned belles and debutantes had their headquarters in his hospitable home during The Finals that year and were on the lawn in gala attire; and just as the vagrant bee is transfixed by the darling buds of May, so every knight errant that strolled past the gate that day almost infallibly came under the spell of enchantment, paused there a moment, and then, having adjusted his cravat and glanced down at the crease in his trousers, sauntered up the long, brick walk leading to the house, prepared in his turn to swear fealty and devotion to either or both of those captivating girls. Meanwhile, there was I toiling and sweating in my solitary state with Puckle's Conic Sections lying open before me, it is true, but even so, far from my thoughts and farther still from my desires. The only other human being in all that cloister of dormitories whose foot step might have been heard under the arcade that day was Charley Hopkins, the porter, who came there occasionally with his mule-cart to get a couple of trunks that had to be taken to the railway station before the office of the baggage agent was closed. As I have said, it was a hot day, and although the door of my room was wide open, I was clad as scantily as the law allowed in those days. From time to time I could see and hear that philanderer, Randolph Hicks, for he was much in evidence in Mr. Thornton's front yard. When I rose from my chair and poked my head through the doorway, I perceived that he was holding a parasol over a young lady whom I took to be the beautiful Annie Leigh Camm herself. Was the white flannel jacket he wore the identical garment I myself had been saving for just such an occasion, were it ever vouchsafed me? Nobody knew better than he did that I was debarred from joining his party and was for the time being the slave of duty; yet as soon as he spied me, he waved his hand triumphantly and shouted derisively, "Trunnion, Trunnion, get up and be spliced, or lie still and be damned!" Then everybody turned to look at me, and there was a loud peal of laughter at my expense. The challenge was more than I could resist. I flung Puckle's Conic Sections down on the floor, and "by the Nine Gods" I swore the "house of Tarquin should stiffer wrong no more!" Farewell, ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas, for I must leave you now -is what I exclaimed in effect, if I did not utter those words, and almost in the twinkling of an eye I was dressed and on the other side of the fence where all the fun was going on. The first thing I did was to satisfy myself that Randolph Hicks's white flannel coat was not mine, thank goodness! no matter who was its rightful owner, and then I set to work to inveigle the young lady from him and hold her parasol myself. That stratagem, I regret to say, was unsuccessful. Randolph Hicks did indeed relinquish the parasol, but it was to a third party who asserted a prior claim, and he and her highness strolled off together arm in arm leaving us to console each other as best we could. They say none but the brave deserves the fair, but a fellow who can make a pretty speech will win her every time.

Retribution should have overtaken me next day when the examination on conic sections was field, but retribution sometimes misses the mark. Colonel Venable and his instructor,

"Math" Miller, were pushed for time to read all those papers, and I suspect they passed over mine lightly and gave me the benefit of the doubt; for Monday morning the list of graduates in the School of Mathematics was posted on the bulletin board by the door of the rotunda, and I heaved a sigh of relief and shouted for joy when I found my name upon it.

It was not in Colonel Venable's classroom but in his hospitable home on East Lawn that I really got to know that eminent man, no less distinguished as a scholar and educator than he had been in his younger days as a soldier and chieftain in the Army of Northern Virginia. His second wife, a widow herself at the time of her marriage, was one of my father's sisters, my beloved Aunt Mary; and Colonel Venable's three daughters Mary, Cantey, and Natalie were charming young ladies as nearly related to me as if they had been my own cousins. More as a member of the family than just as a frequent and welcome visitor I had free access to this unusual and delightful household, a high privilege and constant pleasure which I am thankful to say I enjoyed all the time I was in college, and there also I came in contact with many of the leading students in the University.

One of Miss Natalie's ardent admirers was my club-mate Sherrard Tabb, who had a room in Dr. Holmes's pavilion next to Colonel Venable's and boarded at Mrs. Perkinson's in the same house, but I dare say whenever he was not attending one of the lectures in the School of Medicine he was more often to be found in the young lady's residence than out of harm's way in his own quarters. Colonel Venable himself, and indeed all the members of his family, were warmly attached to him, as well they might be, for Sherrard Tabb, talented, handsome, and agreeable, was no ordinary young man, and nobody could help liking him at first sight, and more and more the better one got to know him. Nearly every evening, weekdays and Sundays, the drawing room of the Venable mansion was filled with visitors and beaux, and then sometimes, abandoning the field to our competitors, Sherrard and I would find our way together along

the passage leading to Colonel Venable's study, which was in the dormitory room No. 36 attached to the pavilion. We could always count on a cordial welcome, even if it took much coaxing to get the Colonel to tell us about his adventures and experiences in the army. Sherrard had a way of drawing him out, and when we once got him started, we never tired of listening. It is a pity neither of us kept a diary of the reminiscences we heard from Colonel Venable's own lips, for he had an almost inexhaustible fund of good stories, either grave or gay, just as the mood took him, many of them of real historical importance. I am sure the narrator must have enjoyed those evenings and was moved and flattered by the unfeigned admiration and affection plainly visible on the eager faces of the two boys who sat and listened by the hour as long as the Colonel would endure it.

Sherrard Tabb, we believed, was destined to be a renowned and beloved physician, for he had every endowment of heart and brain for that noble profession, and was skillful and dexterous in the art of healing. Alas, the life of that "sweet prince" was cut short ere it had time to blossom and fulfil its golden promise.

The class in Senior Greek was held early in the morning three times a week, as I recall, in the basement lecture-room on the east side of the rotunda. Strange to say, I have more or less forgotten all my other classmates except Breckinridge Robertson and Tom Randolph of Edgehill; yet I believe Harrison Randolph of Charlottesville was one of that group also. Nor must I omit to mention Bob Radford, Colonel Peters' right bower in Latin, only, he was a prodigy and in a class by himself, for Greek was to him almost like his mother tongue, whereas to all the rest of us it was simply Greek and nothing more. I suppose there were not more than a dozen students in all, occupying the two front rows of benches, but Radford, instructor in Latin, had a seat somewhere in the rear, aloof like Catiline in the Roman senate.

My recollection is also that my first year as a student was Mr. Humphreys's second year as professor of Greek in the University

of Virginia. I know we started out that session by reading The Clouds of Aristophanes in a new edition of the text that had just recently been edited by Mr. Humphreys himself, and while I have every reason to believe that it was a volume of exceptional merit, it seemed to me that the deeper I got in the play, the denser the clouds gathered around me. The truth is that. first Greek comedy we read turned out to be rather a dull performance to most of us, chiefly because nearly the whole hour we spent in class was consumed in an intermittent dialogue between Mr. Humphreys on his raised platform in front and Bob Radford in his solitary seat by the window in the rear of the room. It was hard to tell what the discussion was all about, for it was over our heads to begin with, and besides I never could really hear what was said. Mr. Humphreys's voice was low and monotonous, more weary than animated, while Radford's speech was like the bleat of a sheep lost in a snowdrift. Yet now and then when I did distinguish a word here and a word there, the voice of the latter floated into my car as if it came from a disembodied spirit in purgatory. Mr. Humphreys somehow contrived to get the gist of his adversary's disjointed outpourings, and little as we could follow the argument, it was plain that they were at loggerheads about some word or other that had cropped up in the text of that day's lesson. As nearly as I could make out, Radford stubbornly and persistently maintained that this particular noun or verb or whatever it was was what is called a "hapax legomenon," a word that had never been uttered before or since by any respectable Athenian; and Mr. Humphreys as stoutly maintained the contrary, yet did not have the proof on the tip of his tongue, but would produce it after class. For two such evenly matched Grecians here was a bone of contention that might be gnawed on until Henry Martin rang the bell for the next class. Mr. Humphreys employed sarcasm, as much as to ask if his learned opponent meant to imply that he did not recognise a rara avis when he saw one and would not have called attention to it in a footnote of his text, had it indeed been such. To this argument Radford had no reply ready and for the moment seemed to subside, although the comers of his mouth twitched as if he were still struggling for utterance; and then Breckinridge Robertson placidly resumed his recitation at the place where he had left off when the fracas started. Yet hardly had he got through the translation of the next two or three lines of the play when Radford was heard in the throes of another spasm, and much to the vexation and impatience of everybody present, the endless dispute would begin all over again. The irrepressible Radford was not unlike the village schoolmaster, At the end of the hour when class was dismissed and we were all filing out through the open door, just as likely as not this singular genius would linger behind at Mr. Humphreys's desk, and persist in going on with the controversy.

Nevertheless, that year spent in the study of the ancient culture of the Greeks, above all in reading some portions of their incomparable literature, both prose and poetry, made a lasting impression on me and was an epoch in my education. For that I can never be grateful enough to the scholarly teaching of Mr. Humphreys who guided me without much show of enthusiasm but with a sure hand. I became acquainted with, in some instances conversant with, the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, the splendid tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the orations of Lysias and Demosthenes, and the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Day by day I was conscious of an enlargement of the mind and an enrichment of the spirit which I have treasured ever since.

It has been truly said that the greatest of all human phenomena was the Attic genius that burst forth more than two thousand years ago in all its variety and in all its glory. According to Sir Henry Maine, in the civilization that we call Christendom, "there is nothing that moves that is not Greek," I remember reading when I was a lad, perhaps in one of the anecdotes in Plutarch's

Lives, that "the Athenians know virtue, the Spartans practise it;" yet to this day no detraction nor disparagement can ever shake my fidelity to Athens as the motherland to be held in everlasting honour.

In the preface of his instructive and delightful book on Ancient Greek Literature published more than forty years ago, Professor, now Sir, Gilbert Murray warned us against "the error of conceiving 'the Greeks' as all much alike -a gallery of homogeneous figures, with the same ideals, the same standards, the same limitations. In reality it is their variety that makes them so living to us -the vast range of their interests, the suggestiveness and diversity of their achievements, together with the vivid personal energy that made the achievements possible.... They had some difficulties to contend with which are now almost out of our path. They had practically no experience, but were doing everything for the first time.... Yet they produced the Athens of Pericles and of Plato."

The same competent authority expresses the opinion that Plato "is the greatest master of Greek prose style, perhaps of prose style altogether, that ever lived." I doubt whether anybody who has read Dr. Jowett's English translation of The Dialogues of Plato ever failed to come under the spell of the incomparable literary art of the great master; yet I am bound to confess that much of the argument and most of the philosophy were lost on me. Thomas Jefferson flung Plato's Republic aside in disgust as being of no practical guidance to him in his labours. Not long ago a learned professor of Greek in Yale University spoke of Plato as an "arrogant snob," who, if he were alive today, would advocate the "use of Nazi means to achieve noble ends," etc. Yet nobody can rob Plato of his genius, and to me at least the loftiness of his purpose and the nobility of his soul are beyond dispute.

At the beginning of the session Breckinridge Robertson and I, and perhaps as many as three or four other first year students also who were candidates for graduation in the School of Greek, had been excused from regular attendance in the intermediate class, with the clear understanding and express stipulation that on a day to be appointed later we should be required to stand "a comprehensive examination on the Homeric poems." This examination, which was given every year, was a movable feast usually held around Easter, but the precise date was uncertain, and all we were told in advance was to be in readiness whenever the summons came. Aunt Mary used to tell me that procrastination was my besetting sin, and while I might lightly reply that Holy Writ bid us take no thought for the morrow, my own conscience sometimes troubled me. Week after week went by without my making the slightest preparation in advance for the day of reckoning that I knew was coming as surely as death and taxes. To be sure, early in the session I had taken the precaution to pin a notice on the wall just over the mantelpiece where I was bound to see it every morning when I shaved in front of the little piece of looking-glass propped on the shelf beside it. "Remember Homer!" was written in large letters, and then underneath, out of pure conceit I suppose, I had copied those sonorous lines of Coleridge's referring to

I got to know the words by heart and used to declaim them aloud to myself as if Homer was the best friend I had in the world, but for all that my acquaintance with him did not go much beyond that inspired verse. It rings in my cars today with all the haunting melody it had for me in the impressionable days of my youth.

As long as I live I shall never cease to remember "Clermont," for that was the name of Major Mason's hospitable home just

beyond the precincts of the town of Charlottesville. Simple and unpretentious, yet spacious and comfortable withal, the house itself -alas! long since a heap of ashes -with the yard around it and the circular driveway leading to it on either side, occupied a plateau on the other side of the railway from the hill that now is crowned by the McIntyre High School; yet for all its modest appearance, "Clermont," as well as I could judge, was as patrician an abode as "Burleigh-house by Stamford-town" or any other country seat in all the land. I knew it in its heyday, when Major Mason and his wife and children were all alive, for then I was a frequent and welcome visitor there, and some of the happiest days of my youth were spent beneath its roof. Bob Mason, eldest of three brothers, was my boyhood chum and afterwards my club-mate in college, and many a time and oft I had accompanied him home in the evening and shared his bed that night, indeed sometimes lingering all next day and perhaps another night too, for it was hard to tear myself away.

I believe I would not be far wrong, were I to say that then the two most beautiful young ladies in all Albemarle were Hebe Harrison, who married Upton Muir of Kentucky soon after I came to college, and Major Mason's elder daughter, Virginia Mason, who some years afterwards married Mr. Benjamin Minor of Washington, D.C. However, I was just a boy in my teens when those lovely girls were at the height of their fame, and I was content to gaze at them from afar. It was just as well, for Virginia's younger sister, Maggie Mason, was nearly my own age, and without doubt she had, what seemed to me as well as I could tell without actual contact, the softest hair in the world, of a shade that varied from brown to auburn according as the light fell on it. The truth is, Maggie Mason was just as pretty and enchanting as a girl could be, and, as might be expected, I fell heels-over-head in love with her.

So when Bob Mason came by my room on Monroe Hill one Friday evening and proposed that I should walk to "Clermont" with him and spend the week-end, it did not take me a moment

to accept the invitation, and if Miss Maggie herself did not receive me with open arms, at any rate she as well as all the other members of the household plainly showed me that I was a welcome and honoured guest from the instant I crossed the threshold. The hospitality of "Clermont" was not an art; it was as natural and abundant as the shade under the great oak trees on the lawn in front of the house.

Monday morning was Saint Patrick's Day; yet it was not Christmas Day and therefore not a holiday in the University of Virginia. So I left "Clermont" soon after breakfast in ample time to be present at the lecture in "Senior Math" at eleven o'clock, trusting to luck that I would not be "sent to the board" all unprepared as I was. As I was ascending the steps of the rotunda, my friend Breckinridge Robertson, standing idly on the edge of the portico, called down to me in his usual casual voice, "Hello, old fellow, I can tell by your knitted brow that already you are chock-full of Homer!" Those ominous words, uttered in a tone of levity, fell on my ears like a death knell. I was taken so much by surprise that Williamson's Integral Calculus dropped from my hand and fell at my feet. Mechanically I stooped down and picked it up. Nobody could look at Breckinridge Robertson without seeing the intelligence that showed in every line of his face, but on this occasion there was a twinkle in his eye and a curl of his lip that made me nervous and boded mischief. Was he just trying to frighten me and raise a laugh at my expense? I knew he was a fellow of infinite jest, and I thoroughly resented it. "A difference of taste in jokes is a strain on the affections," was the only retort I could think of at the moment, and that was a line I had read in one of George Eliot's novels. He pointed his finger at the bulletin board by the side of the front door of the rotunda, and thither I went without another word. There, sure enough, in indelible ink was the notice is official as if it had been written on parchment. The date told me it had been posted Friday afternoon when I was on my way to "Clermont" with Bob Mason. "Comprehensive examination

on Homer for all candidates for graduation in Greek," etc., to be held, rain or shine, bright and early Tuesday morning! and signed "M. W. Humphreys." The dismay on my countenance must have been plainly visible, and it may have suggested to Breckinridge Robertson the picture of one of the foolish virgins in the New Testament who had neglected to trim their lamps, for as he descended the steps of the rotunda, he called back, derisively, "Behold the bridegroom cometh!"

All at once my mind became cool and collected. Not a moment was to be lost; the case was as nearly desperate as it could possibly be. Of course, "Senior Math" was out of the question for that day. I turned my back on the rotunda and proceeded straight to Olivier's Bookshop as if by instinct, and there, with much discrimination and within less than five minutes, I purchased over the counter three volumes, namely, Keep's Homer containing six books of the "Iliad" (I determined I had to let the "Odyssey" slide), a compact little Homeric Dictionary bound in yellow cloth (very convenient for my purpose), and, last and most indispensable of all, a Bohn's Library edition of "Homer's Iliad literally translated," which is on my bookshelf now almost as good as new, with my name on the title page inscribed in faded ink just as I wrote it on Saint Patrick's Day nearly three score years ago. With this parcel of books under my arm I hastened to my solitary room on Monroe Hill which I had not entered for more than two days, and there I set to work in earnest. Rome was not built in a day, and was there any man alive who could read the "Iliad" and learn all there was to know about Homer in less than twenty-four hours? Yet that was the task I had to perform in some kind of fashion -not just translation only, but Homeric grammar, syntax and metre, Greek civilization in the time of Homer, and then, Who was Homer anyway? (the Homeric Question, as it was called, including Wolf's Prolegomena ad Hoinemm [1795] and "the present aspect" of the controversy). Not all the king's horses and all the king's men, supposing they were at my disposal, pulling

together and doing their utmost to help, could suffice to enable me to accomplish the Herculean labour by the appointed hour. It was long past midnight when I put aside the lapboard I had used to support all the volumes spread out before me and rose from my chair. Yet my head was clear as a bell, and I went to bed and slept soundly until Andrew Jackson came early in the morning and made the fire.

The examination lasted all day Tuesday, and I was weary enough when it was finished. Yet I had a faint ray of hope that I might have passed it without much credit, for I had had one or two "breaks." The passage to be translated was one I had happened to read by the help of my "pony," and as luck would have it, not a single question had been asked about the "Odyssey."

Weeks passed, filled for me with secret anxiety, and then one day near the end of the session, Mr. Humphreys announced before beginning the lecture that morning that he would write on the board the list of students who had been successful in passing the examination. My name came first, Breckinridge Robertson's second. He was sitting next me, and I tried to look unconcerned and a trifle bored. Yet nothing could conceal my astonishment. I knew Homer nodded sometimes, but I did not suppose that Mr. Humphreys had acquired that habit also. I have never ceased to wonder how I managed to pass that examination at the top of the class. Not even Phineas Finn was more surprised and elated when he found he had been duly elected member of Parliament for the borough of Loughshane in Ireland.

In the 1880's Sweetbriar College for women had not yet been founded, and as a rule young ladies in Virginia had to be content with such higher education as could be obtained in a first-class finishing school on the order of Edgehill within sight of Monticello or Miss Baldwin's famous seminary in Staunton. Yet, odious as comparisons are, it is open to doubt whether the débutante of that remote age, who had perhaps never read a line

of Virgil's Aeneid or even so much as heard of Boyle's Law about the pressure and volume of a gas, was not to all intents and purposes as well equipped with useful knowledge as her accomplished granddaughter is nowadays who has graduated at Bryn Mawr magna cum laude and has read Schopenhaur's essays. Be that as it may, I can testify from my own experience that a college belle who flourished at the University of Virginia in my student days knew more than enough to "come in out of the rain," as the saying is, and contrived somehow to make a show of erudition, enough to keep pace with those beaux who prided themselves on their academic accomplishments. If the conversation in the parlour happened to turn on some paradox in Noah K.'s moral philosophy, or maybe if the rule in Shelley's case was tossed on the carpet for discussion by one of Mr. Minor's enthusiastic disciples, indeed no matter how intricate and recondite the subject might be, the versatility of the young lady in question was apt to be no less extraordinary and remarkable than her ingenuity and sagacity. She might be "uncertain, coy, and hard to please," but she could be a "ministering angel" if the occasion demanded it. For instance, suppose you were "down on your luck," simply wretched for fear of "flunking" to-morrow in Latin. All you had to do was to put on your hat, maybe change your suit of clothes, and go across the Lawn, let us say, to seek comfort from one of the high priestesses who had her abode over there, or possibly indeed without having to cross the Lawn you might find her in the Pavilion next door to your room. The chances were that in less than an hour all your dread of Colonel Peters and his terrible Syllabus would have subsided completely, and your mind would be tranquil. She would know exactly what your weakness was, would tell you in the sweetest way in the world how to remedy it, and would send you back to your "midnight oil" restored in body and soul, doubtless with a big slice of sponge cake besides. My dear fellow, you would be a man again fortified against adversity, like one who has gone to a good doctor and has been cured of St. Vitus's dance. I used to hear that Delia Page (who lived in the Pavilion at the north end of West Lawn) took her male patients, one at a time, out to the University Cemetery or somewhere in that vicinity. She sat on the stile, and he sat at her feet; he gave her his book to hold, and she heard him his lesson. Then they went home hand in hand together and had supper in her father's house, and the next day it was told all over the campus how he had "curled" in Chemistry, so noticeably indeed that even Dr. Mallet unbended and bowed towards him. Delia Page's reputation for rescuing students from the Slough of Despond was certainly very high in those days.

If there is a spark of poetic fire in a man's breast, his sweetheart is mighty apt to kindle it into flame. Perhaps also the lonely genius of Edgar Allan Poe still brooded over West Range where he had lived in the short interval of his college days. Whatever may have been the source of inspiration, certain it is that from time to time an aspirant among us bolder than the rest would woo the muse and try his prentice hand at ars poetica in one form or another. The ballads and sonnets that were composed in the University in the 1880's, the fair Rosalinds to whom they were indited, and even the writers themselves, for the most part anonymous, nearly all alike are now buried in perhaps merciful oblivion. Yet for good or ill some little residue of these lyrics has been rescued and preserved in Tom Wood's Arcade Echoes from which I have quoted already. In my judgment Edmund Watson Taylor's sonnet beginning with the lines,

richly deserves a place in any anthology of American poetry. A ballad entitled "Declaration in Assumpsit," composed, I believe, by my friend Robert ("Bolivar") Saunders, was another piece that ranked high in our youthful estimation, not so much for its tuneful rhythm as for its accurate legal lore. All I can quote from memory is the first verse: No doubt the case was ultimately tried in court, but I do not, know the sequel, though I suspect Susan remained in possession of her booty.

The rivalry between different cliques of college belles was often jealous and intense without ever coming to an open declaration of war. In the University and its environs various powerful combinations flourished which might have been called "sororities," as, for example: the  Burthe  sisters, Maggie, Nonnie, Maud, and Adèle, who had their headquarters in their mother's home at one end of West Range; the Minor sisters, Mattie, Susie, and Nannie, and the Venable ditto, whose camps were side by side on East Lawn; the Harrison sisters, Virginia, Hebe, and Lizzie, whose bower was in "The Grove" on what is now called Wertland Street; the Southall sisters, Mary, Martha, and Emily (or "Dolly") and the Robertson sisters, Emma, Alice, and Lettie, who between them might be said to dominate Park Street downtown in Charlottesville; and Virginia and Maggie Mason at "Clermont" just off the highway that is known now as Rugby Avenue. Each of these organizations did a thriving business and was a social centre whose influence in university affairs was far from negligible.

Private Willis in Iolanthe, doing sentry duty in the palace yard at Westminster, could not help thinking as he paced back and forth how strange and really "comi-cál" it was

So also when I was a boy I used to wonder how it came to pass that every girl in Virginia was predestined from birth to be either a "round-dancer" or else (God help. her!) a "square dancer," who would have to take her chances in life as best she could under that handicap. The  Burthe , Harrison, Mason, and Robertson girls all belonged in the first category and chased "the glowing hours with flying feet"; whereas, the Minor, Venable, and Southall girls, who had been taught to believe that "Thou shalt not waltz" was one of the Ten Commandments, could only sit by the wall and "look on" at the "German" or "final ball" that used to be held in the rotunda at the end of the session, no doubt sighing to think how sinful and delightful the spectacle was and wishing their parents had been cast in a different mould. At that voluptuous hour the "dancing girl" was in her element and certainly at a premium; yet in spite of her manifest advantage, even she could not monopolize all the gay cavaliers assembled on the ballroom floor that evening. If you happened to glance over towards one of the alcoves, the chances were that you would see there that other girl, who never danced a step, seated like the queen of hearts in the midst of her faithful courtiers. Nay, you might even fancy that she viewed with disdain her graceful rival swaying to and fro in the mazes of the waltz.

In some households where round-dancing was outlawed, card-playing was a cardinal sin also. Yet it might be that a girl who was strictly forbidden to dance might be allowed to take a hand in a game of whist, particularly if her father was addicted to that pastime and a fourth player was needed to make a table for the evening. On the whole I am disposed to think that the young folks in that generation were perhaps more sinned against than sinning; yet it seems to me also that old and young mingled together then with greater freedom and mutual pleasure than is the custom nowadays.

Occasionally one of Calico's shining lights would suddenly take it into her dear little head to get married, and naturally an event of that kind always made a great stir in the community. I believe I have already alluded to Hebe Harrison's wedding

which took place soon after I came to college; and yet before the session ended, Alice Robertson, supposed to be the heroine of Jack Mosby's operetta, crowned her romantic career by marrying Allen Hanckel. These were both heavy losses, but calico is one of those precious commodities that has.-a way of keeping up the supply, and in my day, I am thankful to say, there never was any dearth of it.

To all intents and purposes the last act of the drama of the Civil War was finished when the curtain went down at Appomattox in 1865 and marked the end of an era. The pathos of that decision was nowhere more poignantly felt than in the proud commonwealth that once had been the Old Dominion. Alien customs, newfangled ways, innovations, and upheavals are the inevitable consequences of defeat in battle; yet men like my father and many others, who had striven in vain to stem the tide and avert the fatal blow, clung stubbornly to the ancient faith and civilization in which the had been reared and nurtured and sought to preserve some remnants of a way of life that was still dear to them. It is true that here and there might be found a Confederate soldier who after the war tried to curry favour with the conquerors, but dear bought is the honey that is licked from a thorn, as I think he was apt to find to his cost. In the dark days of Reconstruction, before I was born, not much could be done in the way of resistance by even the staunchest patriots; yet their labour was not all in vain, just as the best carriage-horses are those that hold back against the coach as it goes rolling and tumbling downhill.

I can never forget one day when I was a little boy just beginning to learn my letters. I came home from school and proudly announced that I knew my alphabet from A to Zee! If I had dropped a bombshell in the house, I could not have created a greater commotion. Even my dear mother averted her face as if I were no child of hers. My father's countenance changed from pride to anger, as I stood trembling before him.

"Never again let me hear you say Zee," he said sternly, pronouncing the word in a tone of contempt. "That letter is Zed as it was in the time of Chaucer, and not all the Yankee spelling-books that were ever composed in Connecticut can change it!" With that he tossed the brand-new book in the fire, and my recollection is that next day he sent me to another school with a note to the teacher advising her to be careful about our mother-tongue. From that hour I have never pronounced that letter any way but Zed, even when long afterwards I taught Mathematics in the North and always excited a titter in the class by saying X, Y, and Zed.

However, by the time I was ready to go to college, the "New South," as it was called, was making headway in spite of all the forces of reaction and conservatism, and a new testament was being preached all over the land and dinned in the cars of my generation. The worst misfortune that can befall a vanquished people is to lose faith in themselves and begin to call in question their highest principles and most cherished beliefs; yet something like that was the inevitable aftermath of the Civil War in the South. Novelties and innovations, trivial enough by themselves and almost too slight to be noticed, yet in the aggregate quite significant, were gradually gaining ground in a steady trend away from what was ancient and long-established and towards new and alien civilization. The tendency could be plainly discerned in the University of Virginia.

The year before I entered college was marked by the appearance at the end of the session of the first volume of Corks and Curls. The original name which it bears to this day was invented by my honoured friend Hampden Bagby, who was the first editor-in-chief. Well do I remember bow it was hailed with enthusiasm as a great and promising achievement; yet it was really nothing much to boast of after all, being at best no more than a poor and servile imitation of the hardy annuals that had been issued regularly year after year in such venerable northern colleges as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Those were famous

institutions, to be sure, ancient and honourable, yet totally different in conception and plan from Mr. Jefferson's "academic village" in Virginia, which had no president, no curriculum, and which at first conferred no degrees. What did we know of class-systems and the distinctions of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors? No procession of scholars in gowns and caps, led by deans and other dignitaries with all the insignia of coloured hoods and sashes, had ever paraded on our campus. In the University of Virginia every student was like every other student and mingled freely and on equal terms with all his comrades in a common society where there was neither Jew nor Greek nor any kind of barrier or caste-distinction. I myself was an "Academ," but many of my closest friends and boon companions in college were in the Law class or the Medical School with pursuits and aims in life far apart from mine. My outlook was enlarged by coming in contact with fellow-students in Law, Medicine, and Engineering, and in this way my knowledge and sympathies were broadened perhaps without my realizing it at the time. I have felt since that this association was a distinct contribution to my education. A large community of miscellaneous young collegians thrown together as if by accident, left much to themselves, and free to mingle one with another in mutual harmonious association, constitutes in itself an automatic school of education. Youth is raw, intemperate, and inexperienced, but youth is likewise keen and open-hearted, quick and observant, critical and generous at the same time; and when many youths come in daily contact and interchange ideas and opinions with one another, they learn without being taught.

Corks and Curls in itself was certainly not much of an innovation, but a cloud no bigger than a man's hand may yet be a portent in the sky and a sign of the times. It came to birth in a period of transition when Thomas Jefferson's model was being metamorphosed, almost imperceptibly at first, and like all else in the South at that time was undergoing a sea-change, whether for good or for ill only the future could tell. A new pattern was

slowly in process of formation fundamentally different in some respects from the simplicity of the original mould.

Of much greater significance than Corks and Curls and a step that was indeed of far-reaching consequence, was the entrance of the University of Virginia into the arena of intercollegiate athletics, heretofore as foreign to us as a Spanish Plaza de Toros. Yet it was plain to see that we could never hope to overtake the seasoned colleges in the North in this untried field of endeavour, though such was our ambition at first. Unquestionably we had some good native material for outdoor sports. Was not Addison Greenway, a magnificent specimen of physical prowess, as stout and stalwart as Ajax, and Allen Potts as nimble and fleet-footed as Achilles? We were sure that neither Harvard nor Yale in all their glory could bring forward two champions more worthy to wear the crown of wild olives. Yet not all the chivalry and valour of Greenway and Potts could save us from ignominious defeat when that redoubtable captain Paul Dashiell and his football team from the Johns Hopkins University "came down like a wolf on the fold" and scattered our eleven to the four winds of heaven. That first encounter was so humiliating and at the same time so enlightening that we set to work next year to pay back the score; indeed, I believe we did fare rather better in this second game. In the interim we had ransacked the wilds of Albemarle County and found at last a mighty giant in the person of big Billy Garth; him, therefore, we fetched from his father's farm and drilled day and night to play centre-rush on our team. He proved to be a formidable obstacle to our opponents, and stood his ground with all the stubbornness of an ox that refuses to yield an inch. Even so, we could not prevail against Captain Dashiell's brilliant tactics. The enemy was wily and resourceful, and this time they sprung on us, all unsophisticated as we were, their new trick of the "forward pass" that completely bewildered big Billy Garth and circumvented him entirely. We learned that more was needed besides brawn and muscle to play the noble game of football. Fas est et ab hoste doceri, but it took

two signal defeats in order for us to profit by this ancient maxim in the art of warfare.

I remember a baseball team that came all the way from the University of Vermont, an institution we had never heard of before. They were tall mountaineers, every mother's son of them; they muffed balls and piled up errors in the field, but how those fellows could bat! Allen Potts nearly ran his legs off trying in vain to overtake a swift ball that hovered for a moment high over his head and then landed deep down in centre field or even over the fence. By the time he got his hands on it, the tall Vermonter who had launched it had scampered round the bases for a home run. To us who watched the game from the side-lines, the utter helplessness of our team under that terrific onslaught of batting was a dreary spectacle.

Meanwhile, a farsighted and resourceful individual in. our midst, Felix H. Levy by name, who was afterwards a famous lawyer in New York, conceived a brilliant idea and promptly executed it. In short, he built a high wooden fence all around the circuit of the old playground back of Dawson's Row, the gate whereof, -as I recollect, was not more than a stone's throw from the old brick mansion called "Montebello." Thereafter, in order to witness an athletic game everybody had to pay a fee of not less than fifty cents for admission. Ingenious and farsighted as Mr. Jefferson was, I doubt whether such an idea as Felix Levy's amphitheatre and gladiatorial shows ever once occurred to him as a necessary and fundamental part of his "academic village." Athletics at the University of Virginia was now on a paying basis. As a form of amusement and recreation the old debating societies were back numbers, -and college politics revolved around the new Athletic Association with its high officials, managers, etc, Now at any rate we were in line with the big colleges in the North.

These changes, and others not unconnected with them, took place towards the end of the century when Queen Victoria still sat on her throne. The best way of dating the epoch, more

or less precisely, is by saying that it was in the days when mantelpieces, marble, mahogany, oak, and pine alike, were ordinarily draped with lambrequins made of Canton flannel, in case you did not happen to have any more elegant material, and looped up gracefully in the middle or at one side by a bow of bright ribbon, as beautiful to look at as it was easy to catch on fire, and easier still to catch all the vagrant dust that floated around in search of a place to settle. It was the time also when elderly spinsters tenderly nursed growing plants in long wooden boxes nailed outside tight against the windows so that never again could the Winds be shut. The window box, as I recall it, was filled with some unearthly kind of soil that soon got to be dry and hard as a brick; yet, if all went well, one or two dingy nasturtiums, possibly also a liver-coloured geranium, somehow struggled to maintain a dreary and precarious existence in it. But why do I pause to speak of such paltry trifles and signs of the times as lambrequins and window boxes, for was it not the time also, or nigh unto it, when a girl in Richmond named Irene Langhorne blossomed out in all her peerless beauty, and, so to speak, set the James on fire? The truth is, when I was in college, she was not yet more than "sweet sixteen," and hardly anybody could have prophesied then that the end of good Victoria's reign would be marked by the advent of the new phenomenon that came to be known as "the Gibson girl." In those days impecunious Virginians like myself -and goodness knows the woods were full of them! -used to save every penny they could rake and scrape in order to go to New York once a year and have a big frolic for as many days as their scanty means would allow. You lived in a hall-room on the top floor of a rather questionable boardinghouse, generally, it seems to me, on East 21St Street. The acme of bliss was to have at least one square meal in the famous restaurant of the old St. Denis Hotel on lower Broadway nearly opposite the present site of the huge Wanamaker Stores. A beefsteak eaten in the St. Denis Hotel was an episode long to be remembered and often related. The only drawback to that one glorious dinner in New York was the tip you had to give the waiter, because after that it was always doubtful whether as much as fifty cents would be left in your purse. That was what it cost to buy -in admission ticket for the peanut gallery of a theatre close at hand where there was a chance of seeing glamourous Lillian Russell, exposed to view as far as the law allowed, or maybe those inimitable comedians Robson and Crane who were the talk of the town.

While I know I must not exceed the limits of my story, it is permissible for me to add here that the decade that got to be known as "the gay nineties" was an eventful one in the annals of the University of Virginia, yet not gay without alloy, for one fateful Sunday in 1895, several years after I had left college, the rotunda was suddenly enveloped in flames and came near being destroyed by fire. Dire as the calamity certainly seemed to be at the time, it turned out to be something like a blessing in disguise, for naught but a consuming fire could ever have severed the old "Annex" building from the rotunda and made it possible to restore the latter to its pristine symmetry and simplicity. Bad as the "Annex" was from an architectural point of view, it was not without its treasures and hallowed associations: the painting called "The School of Athens" hung in the big auditorium upstairs, the large lecture-room of the class in junior Natural Philosophy and Mr. Smith's historic laboratories were both on the ground floor, and in my time, just before the hour for Mr. Minor's lecture, the long flight of stone steps leading down to the basement was usually crowded from top to bottom by eager disciples of law in anticipation of the arrival of their master. No vestige of the old eyesore was left above ground after the restoration of the rotunda.

I believe I have already noted that Dr. Barringer was the last professor in the University of Virginia to hold the ancient and honourable post of Chairman of the Faculty. During his administration Cabell Hall and other handsome buildings were erected to enlarge and complete the quadrangle of the Lawn as it appears

today. Meanwhile, under the capable guidance and practically sole supervision of Mr. Thornton, a new School of Engineering was beginning to take shape. The total number of students enrolled in college was increasing steadily year by year. The "academic village" was expanding.

According to the Bible, when Samuel was an old man, the elders of Israel came to him and begged him to make them a king to rule over them and judge them "like all the nations." So likewise towards the close of the last century, a movement was set on foot to abolish the office of Chairman of the Faculty and anoint a president in his place to have dominion over the University of Virginia, subject only to the Board of Visitors. The great argument in favour of this proposal was that presidents were the heads of all the other colleges in the land, and that if the right man was found for the job, it was not too much to hope that his competence would be shown by his ability to raise money for an institution so deserving and so much in need of financial encouragement and support. The richly endowed colleges in the North were examples of the munificence of private benefactors. It might be hard for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, but the theory was that it was harder still for a benevolent rich man not to stick his nose in a trap set for him by a good and efficient college president.

It was more than a decade after I left college before this radical change was made in the government of the University of Virginia, and if I allude to it here, it is simply because the seeds of the new order began to be sown long before the fruit itself appeared above ground.

In due course my first session in the University of Virginia came to an end; yet I remember little of The Finals of 1889 except the evening of the celebration of the Jefferson Literary Society when Gordon Battle presided over the exercises on that occasion. That was the evening when Henry W. Grady (1851-1889), known far and wide as "the silver-tongued orator of the

South," delivered a famous address that roused his audience to a high pitch of enthusiasm. My intimate friend, Thomas Longstreet Wood, had won the magazine medal, and, consequently, it fell to his lot to introduce the distinguished speaker who was the guest of honour. Grady was a man of fine presence and ample proportions, whereas Tom Wood was slight of build and naturally a little nervous because of the task that lay before him. The contrast in the appearance of the, two speakers could hardly have been more marked, and I remember that I myself, seated far back in the big auditorium, was disturbed by a feeling of anxiety for my comrade when he came forward to the edge of the platform and bowed to the audience. Tom began a little haltingly and diffidently at first, but when he explained that he was there that evening simply because he was in somewhat the same position as Brer Rabbit and "bleeged to clime dat tree," the audience roared with laughter and appreciation, and thereafter, Tom kept them all in such good humour that everybody was sorry when he finished his short speech. The loudest applause came from Mr. Grady himself, who went out of his way to pay a tribute to his young sponsor. I believe that was the last time Henry W. Grady appeared in public, for he died of pneumonia a few months afterwards. Tom Wood dedicated Arcade Echoes (1890) in his honour; then, alas, Tom Wood's short life ended also. It was in the autumn of 1881 that Hampden Bagby, Raleigh Minor, and I stood with our heads bowed before a little mural tablet that was erected to the memory of that gifted youth in the village-church at Ivy where he was born.

The Finals of 1889 are memorable also as being the last days in college of three older students who were among my lifelong friends; each of whom, outstanding and facile princeps in one way or another, was at that time the worthy object of my youthful admiration and affection. The only one of the trinity who is now alive is George Gordon Battle, who for more than half a century has been a leader of the bar in the city of New York and certainly one of the most eminent and useful citizens

of the great metropolis. Among the other honours that were heaped on him at The Finals was the degree of Master of Arts. Not long afterwards he crowned all his laurels by winning Martha Bagby for his bride, and surely that was glory enough for any mortal man.

The other two friends to whom I referred were John Staige Davis, Jr., and Charles Venable Carrington, each of whom took the oath of Hippocrates at the end of the session and was duly proclaimed to be a full-fledged M.D. Fielding Lewis Taylor, another lifelong friend of mine, got his Master of Arts degree that same year, along with Gordon Battle, but he stayed two more years in college until he graduated in Medicine in 1891.

John Staige Davis, following in the footsteps of his illustrious sire, rose easily to the stature of a great physician and renowned teacher of Medicine in the University of Virginia, beloved far and wide and noted above all for his brilliant and charming personality and his sparkling wit.

Of all those I have mentioned I suppose I was closest to Charley Carrington; yet I lost contact with him almost completely when we separated and he went to Richmond to practice medicine. During that one year when we were in college together, he was my beau ideal, both my guide and mentor. He was one of nature's noblemen, handsome, gay, and debonair, chivalrous, and upright in thought, word, and deed. He wielded a good influence over me in the perilous days of youth, and I have never ceased to be grateful to him.

When Charley Carrington left college, I had the good fortune to fall heir to his room, 34 East Lawn, next door to Colonel Venable's pavilion. I moved from Monroe Hill and lived there as long as I was in college. Not the room only but everything in it fell to my lot, for in the course of a long sojourn, C. V. C. (as he used to call himself) had accumulated a really prodigious pile of junk of one sort or another, some of which proved to be useful and convenient to me. He bequeathed it all with a lordly air: miscellaneous articles, odds and ends, canes, umbrellas, razors, curtains, lambrequins, counterpanes, jars, bowls, bric-a-brac, and

I know not what else besides, much of it mere flotsam and jetsam that had been left behind by transient guests whom Charley Carrington, the most hospitable fellow that ever lived, had entertained from time to time. It took nearly a week to sort out all this plunder and dispose of it to the best advantage.

On or before the first day of the following session, as soon as I was comfortably installed in my new quarters and ready to receive visitors, I tacked a card on the outside of the front door with my name inscribed on it and the announcement "Licentiate in Greek and Mathematics" written underneath it. It was intended to notify the passer-by that within that lowly abode dwelt one who was duly qualified and accredited to give instruction in either or both of the subjects named. At least a week passed without any notice being taken of the advertisement, and then one day there was a knock on the door. An applicant entered and told me with a little embarrassment that he had come to be "coached in Greek." My purse was low at the time, and I remember distinctly that I was badly in need of ten dollars, which was the price of the course of two lessons a week for six months, according to my recollection. I welcomed the pilgrim with joy. A schedule of hours was made out which was mutually satisfactory and convenient to us both. Far from haggling over the fee, as I was afraid he might do, the young gentleman insisted on paying half of it in advance. Then he bowed politely and departed. For more than a month I made a point of being on hand at the appointed hours of instruction, but I never again laid eyes on my pupil until many years afterwards when I happened to be present at the University of Virginia on some notable occasion. Then I was casually introduced to him again without recognizing him. Later I learned that he was then a member of the Board of Visitors. His name, as I recall it, was Oliver, and if he is alive today, I owe him at least as much as five dollars.

Here again I find I have inadvertently been led to trespass on the contents of the next chapter of my memoirs which concerns my second year in college.