IV
FIRST GLIMPSE IN NATURE'S REALM
1889-1890
In the days of my youth when I was a student in the University of
Virginia, 1888-1893. | ||
IV
FIRST GLIMPSE IN NATURE'S REALM
1889-1890
MILTON, Tract on Education.
As long as Charley Carrington was in residence as a student, his hospitable room on East Lawn was indeed a model of comfort and cleanliness, but when he abandoned it and turned it over to me, chaos was its proper name. The rubbish had all to be cleared away before the floors and walls could be washed and scoured, but at last when the carpet was laid and the furniture put in place, I contemplated my work with much satisfaction and said to myself that my new habitation had an air of respectability, to say the least.
Now if a young lady, bent on some errand or other or perhaps just taking a morning stroll, happened to saunter past the open door of a dormitory room on the arcade, she would never have dared to peep inside, no matter how great her curiosity might have been, for in the days of my youth the rules of feminine decorum were rigidly prescribed, and unbecoming conduct, as it used to be called, could give rise to scandal. However, if she and I met each other outside, and particularly if at that moment I was lucky enough to be in tier good graces, she would be apt to inquire what was the colour of my curtains in case she might take it into her pretty little head to make a bow of ribbon to hold the folds in place. Of course, Aunt Mary's stepdaughters,
One day soon after the session began, being in a hurry to get to class, I forgot to bolt the latch on the door when I left the room, and when I returned about an hour later, a beautiful old gold watch which I had carelessly laid on the end of the mantelpiece was gone! I never laid eyes on it again. It was a cherished heirloom bequeathed to me by my old "mammy" Malvina Sparks when she made tier will and died in my father's home some years before I came to college. Inside the case an inscription was engraved relating that the watch had been given to Malvina by her old mistress Miss Matilda Southall of Williamsburg, a lady. who died long before I was born. I prized this watch not for its own sake only, but because it was the sole token I had in the world of the dearly beloved old coloured lady by whose side I had stood so often when I was a little boy and she was making gingerbread on the kitchen table. Aunt Mary had known Malvina too, and she was full of sympathy when I told her of the loss of my watch and she insisted on sending at once for the only policeman in the town of Charlottesville. He was an old Confederate soldier with a wooden leg, and in spite of all that he could do, no trace of the thief was ever found. Only a few years ago I lost another valuable heirloom in much the same way. It was a gold
Soon after the session opened, Aunt Mary took me aside one day and took me by surprise also, for she asked me how I would like to be Colonel Venable's private secretary and get my meals at her table by way of compensation. The payment was ample, and I told her immediately that nothing could be more to my taste and particularly the meals at her table which I had tasted many times already and knew how good they were. Besides, if the truth must be told, I welcomed the joyous prospect of being brought three times daily in company of tier gay and charming stepdaughters, to say nothing of the pleasure that would be afforded by the elder members of the household also. I knew well what a genial and jolly old soul Colonel Venable could be when he was not in his classroom and was separated entirely from Solid Analytic Geometry. As I have already mentioned, he had an inexhaustible fund of good stories and memorabilia of his eventful life, just the night before when I was there for supper he had told me about an aristocratic old gentleman in Halifax County, a friend of his father, who when he was solicited to vote for Thomas Jefferson, of Albemarle, for president of the United States, shook his head thoughtfully and firmly declined to do so because Mr. Jefferson lived at Monticello, and that was "a little too fur North" in his opinion.
Even on a strictly business basis, undoubtedly I bad the best of the new bargain, for now I did not have to pay for my meals in a boardinghouse and my duties as private secretary were more nominal than real. As well as I could see, my chief business was to make myself agreeable to every member of the family. Occasionally, it might be as often as once a week, the Colonel would send for me to come to his office on the other side of the house
After ransacking my memory I can recall only one other duty that I was called on to perform that year in my capacity of private secretary, and certainly from my point of view it was in the nature of a frolic rather than a task. When Colonel Venable was Chairman of the Faculty, he had inaugurated a system of University Extension Teaching which I never clearly under stood only I know it involved holding yearly examinations in certain accredited academics and schools in the state of Virginia. Accordingly, towards the end of the session he commissioned me as his duly appointed representative to conduct a series of examinations that were held that year in a Jesuit ' School or Roman Catholic Seminary in the city of Alexandria and perhaps also in the Episcopal High School near by, for I remember spending one night in the latter institution. Invested as I was with some thing like proconsular authority, I went on this mission with a high sense of my own dignity and importance. The question papers had all been prepared beforehand by certain professors in the Academic Department of the University, and all I had to do was to preside at the ceremony of holding the examinations and to take care that everything was carried out with due decorum. Perhaps I was absent from the University on this business for an interval of three days.
Here I may mention another little job I had this session that
As I look back on it now, it seems to me that that session when I was virtually a member of the Venable household was certainly
Natalie Venable, youngest of the three sisters, was a charming débutante then, and I can testify that she did a thriving and disconcerting business among the students. I might have sued for her hand myself had I not realized early in the action that I never could stand the ghost of a chance against such formidable rivals as Hampden Bagby, Sherrard Tabb, Stewart Bryan, and Raleigh Minor who were among the foremost aspirants. Her choice of Raleigh in the end was a lucky one for me, for I was ever afterwards a welcome guest in their hospitable home on West Lawn where they lived so many happy years after he got to be a distinguished professor of Law, as his father was before him.
That year when I was Colonel. Venable's secretary, his elder son Frank Preston Venable was already professor of Chemistry in the University of North Carolina and destined to be president of that college not long afterwards. One other member of Aunt Mary's household was her darling son and only child, then still a schoolboy about twelve years old and now the famous surgeon, Dr. Charles Scott Venable, Jr., of San Antonio, Texas.
An incidental advantage of being a guest at Aunt Mary's
The two families of Minor and Venable lived next door to each other on East Lawn and were allied by close ties of ancient friendship. The first time I came in contact with Raleigh Minor, DKE, and his elder brother John, Chi Phi, who bore his father's honoured name, was in my uncle's house on Park Street in Charlottesville, where Mary, Martha, and "Dolly" Southall were already eligible young ladies with many admirers before I ever* came to college. My special chums in the Minor household were Raleigh and his younger sister Nannie Jacquelin Minor, but indeed I was fondly attached to every member of that big family, old and young alike. The Minor's of Albemarle have ever been a comely race, men and women both; yet, it seems to me, Raleigh Colston Minor was the comeliest of them all, as certainly he was one of the most loveable of men. His handsome and distinguished appearance was conspicuous in any company where he was present, and the qualities of his mind and heart were no less rare and beautiful than his outward countenance. Full well I know, "I shall not look upon his like again."
Mr. Minor's private sanctum and study, in the last dormitory room on East Lawn, communicated with the drawing room in his pavilion by a door that had been made in the intervening wall. The affable and dignified old gentleman liked the society of young people, and even when he was supposed to be engrossed in more serious occupations, he contrived to overhear much of the nonsense and merriment that echoed in the evening from the adjacent room where his lively daughters and their swains were
Every morning as soon as breakfast was finished and before the company rose from the table, Mr. Minor had family prayers in the big dining room across the hall from the parlour. The congregation was generally a large one, including not only Mrs. Minor herself — "Aunt Ellen," as we used to call her — and her numerous stepchildren as well as the maidservant and the manservant (old "Uncle Alfred" who helped to wait on the table as best he could in spite of his obvious rheumatism and other infirmities), but all the strangers also who happened to be "within the gates" of that hospitable mansion, quite a goodly number as a rule. I remember the ceremony well because I was there for breakfast many times whenever I spent the night and shared Raleigh's room upstairs. It began with the formal reading of a long chapter in the Bible which Mr. Minor expounded as
he went along, occasionally asking hard and uncomfortable questions only too apt to expose the ignorance of his hearers, or, what was worse, their sinful inattention. Then at, a given signal, with much noise and clatter, all with one accord pushed their chairs back from the table and knelt devoutly on their knees. At this moment I was deathly afraid of sneezing or of being taken with a fit of hiccoughs, for then Mr. Minor would wait patiently until perfect silence prevailed, but the interruption was considered to be both unnecessary and unseemly. It goes almost without saying that Mr. Minor prayed long and fervently, never
On one particularly memorable occasion I, sitting at table with my back to the Latrobe stove, was wretchedly uncomfortable all through breakfast, and when the time came to kneel down in front of that furnace, my temperature had almost reached the point of combustion. I looked behind me under the table and described there in the darkness a clear, unimpeded, if somewhat circuitous, passage leading between the feet of the prostrate company to what appeared to be a vacant space on the opposite side of the long table. Instantly and unhesitatingly I crawled towards the distant haven, trying to make as little disturbance as possible and somewhat painfully aware that, even if I reached port in safety, no chair was placed there for my elbows to rest on and that I would be left kneeling as it were in mid-air without visible means of support. As soon as the benediction was pronounced, I leaped to my feet hoping to mingle with the throng and escape without detection, but Mr. Minor quickly spied me, and chuckling all over with mirth (for he divined what had happened), expressed astonishment at finding me after prayers on the other side of the room. There was nothing to do but to make a clean breast of it, and so I retorted, "Well, sir, fire in an ordinary oven may not be as consuming is hell-fire in the New Testament about which you were telling us just now, but the oven was closer to me at the moment and appeared to be the greater evil of the two." Mr. Minor took his cane from the outstretched hand of the old coloured butler, and pointing it at me, "Alfred," said he, "the next time that young gentleman is here for breakfast, please find a seat for him as far from Hades as possible."
On remote Monroe Hill the atmosphere had not been so charged with combustibles as it was on the Lawn in the midst of the rivalry and jealousy between the different sororities. We are told in the Bible, "Ye cannot serve God and mammon," but as far as I know, scripture is silent about not swearing allegiance to
It was hard to say whether the Burthe girls annexed the ATO fraternity, lock, stock, and barrel, or whether those dashing and impetuous youths had one and all sworn an oath that they, and they only, were to be the guardians and champions of those enchanting sisters. Yet I knew it was as much as the life of a DKE was worth in those days for him to pay serious attention to Maggie, Nonnie, or Maud; though now and then, I myself did venture on their premises and once indeed ran foul of a statuesque maiden, one of their cousins from New Orleans, who might easily have turned my head, had I not found out in time that Edwin Hobson would not brook trespassing on his preserves.
Now Charles Minor who married Mary Venable happened to be a Delta Psi, and I have always wondered if it were by virtue of that connection that along about 1890-91, the brotherhood of St. Anthony, Stewart Bryan, Billy Peterkin, Winslow Randolph, Tom Pinckney and all their subalterns, took over Cantey and Natalie Venable with as little compunction or ceremony as the Nazis showed when they invaded Norway in 1940. No matter what time of day you happened to call on either one of those popular young ladies, she was almost sure to be surrounded by a phalanx of devoted Delta Psi's; and Hampden Bagby used to complain bitterly that so far as he was concerned, "Miss Natalie
In the way of education, and apart from Mathematics, the past decade of my life had been spent exclusively among the ancients, nor can I say now, according to my mature judgment, that that precious time of youth had been spent in vain, in. view of the fact that the roots of modern culture and civilization go deep down in the centuries of the past. The study of Greek and Latin is certainly an excellent mental discipline if it be nothing more, and at least I had acquired a certain power of learning intelligently and comprehendingly each new lesson appointed to be done. Yet it is strange indeed to think that at the age of eighteen I was as ignorant as the ancients themselves of the magic realm of science that had flourished and borne fruit ever richer and richer from the time of the discovery of America and the renascence of Europe. Undoubtedly, my second session in the University of Virginia when for the first time in my life I set foot in this new kingdom of knowledge was the turning point of all my education. Before that year, Natural Philosophy had been to me a name only as to the meaning whereof I had only the dimmest conception; now it was a case of love at first sight. Greece and Rome were left behind as if they had never mattered!
At that period it had not entered my head to think of planning my course of study with a view to obtaining the degree of Master of Arts, and I suppose it must have been simply a genuine thirst for knowledge that led me to apply that year for graduation in the Schools of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry. Doubtless I consulted my father and he approved of the programme. How was it that nobody told me that it was nothing short of folly to take the senior class in Natural Philosophy without having completed the prerequisite course in the junior class? Yet no human being interposed the slightest objection or gave me a word of advice.
"Junior Natural" was intended to be a rather thorough survey of general physics, not altogether elementary, yet not difficult, only perfectly novel to me. On the other hand, "Senior Natural," by common consent supposed to be the hardest subject in the M.A. curriculum of those, days, was indeed a very advanced course on "Sound and Light," which it might be inferred was entirely beyond my grasp at the time. The first lesson was in a formidable little textbook called Vibratory Motion and Sound, the very title seemed to give me vertigo. I plunged headlong into this sea of symbols and mathematical formulae, floundering from one page to the next in the vain hope of clutching hold of a solid rock where I could rest and have a breathing spell. Worse even than this preliminary textbook was the solid array of "Notes" with which Professor Smith had covered all the blackboards before the class assembled and which had to be copied after class, even if no clue could be gained as to the meaning thereof. So great, was my bewilderment that I sought refuge in the old library in the whispering gallery of the rotunda, consulting every learned treatise I could find there that might if possible cast a ray of illumination on the ineffable mystery of "Light and Sound" in which I was enmeshed. Only the other day I visited the imposing new Alderman Library that now adorns the University of Virginia, and quite unexpectedly and unaccountably a feeling of curiosity seized me to look again at Sir John Herschel's celebrated article on "Light" published originally in 1828 in the London Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, for, it had been one of the luminous and voluminous treatises I waded through that year when I was a candidate for graduation in the School of Natural Philosophy. I wondered if that huge old folio tome, nearly if not quite as big as Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, was indeed still in existence, and if perchance it had escaped combustion in the fire of 1895 when the rotunda itself came so near being consumed. The courteous attendant brought the identical volume to me and placed it in my hands once more,
Not wretched William Cowper himself nor the poet's "Castaway" I think was ever more at sea that I was that first half-year in "Senior Natural"; yet even then I was buoyed up by an unquenchable enthusiasm and an abiding faith that I was on the verge of a strange new world nobler and richer than all I had ever seen before.
Meanwhile at the same time I was attending regularly the lectures in the junior class with eager enjoyment and not without profit and instruction. Strange as it may sound to some of my youthful contemporaries (if any such are still alive), I believe I can truthfully say I never missed a syllable that was uttered, for in those impressionable days I was under some kind of a spell. Mr. Smith was my hero, and I was his humble disciple. As I gazed at him from my seat in class just as the lecture was about to begin, I used to say to myself in a kind of ecstasy:
Him or her I shall follow,
As the water follows the moon, silently,
With fluid steps anywhere around the globe.
No doubt Mr. Smith's lectures were over the beads of most of us, and equally no doubt many of his youthful hearers like careless Gallio in the Bible were downright bored. Yet even the dullest member of the class was bound to be thrilled by the sudden and unexpected burst of eloquence that from time to time fell upon the ears of all who were present in that crowded lecture-room. At that moment it was as if "Frank Smith" were communing with himself, oblivious of his surroundings and unmindful of his audience, transfigured and borne aloft on the wings of his high imagination. Usually the great moment came at the climax of a successful experiment that had just been demonstrated to the class. It might be elicited perhaps by the manifest evidence of the prodigious force of water expanding in the act of freezing and bursting asunder an iron bomb shell; or by the beautiful geometrical union of two soap bubble films in strict obedience to the laws of surface-tension in liquids; or by the symmetrical sand pattern that delineated the nodal lines on a plate of brass that had been startled by the bow of a violin into a spasm of musical ecstasy; or indeed by any one of a hundred strange and exquisite natural phenomena such as we had never seen before or dreamed could' come to pass. "Frank Smith" himself seemed to glow with new rapture and astonishment, childlike and unfeigned, each time he summoned his wonder-working "daemon" to appear and do his bidding before the whole assembled "Junior Natural" class, and as he spoke his incantation, the whole class with one accord thundered with applause.
My old colleague George Vincent Wendell, himself a great teacher of Physics in Columbia University, told me that once when he was connected with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Francis H. Smith of the University of Virginia had been invited to Boston to deliver the principal address on
Mr. Smith had been a pupil of William B. Rogers (1804-1882), and doubtless he had learned from that illustrious master the art of experimental dexterity and manipulation. Much of his apparatus was made by his own hands and was often exceedingly ingenious, all the more useful and efficient for being so plain and simple. The demonstration and measurement of the earth's diurnal rotation by means of Foucault's pendulum was always a notable day in class, and then the old lecture-room in the "Annex" would be crowded by spectators from all parts of the University. The pendulum was hung from the roof of the building, and as the heavy iron bob swung slowly to and fro just over the top of the lecture table, a delicate little lever with a tiny bit of mirror-glass fastened by sealing wax at the end of the long arm was brushed aside ever so little at each transit, while a spot of light reflected from the mirror traversed a distant scale on the wall and recorded the movement of the earth. I believe this impressive experiment was duly performed each session, never once unsuccessfully, as far as I know.
Luminous fountains and cascades of water are such a common spectacle nowadays that often they may be seen by night even at a village fair without exciting comment, much less wonder and awe. Yet the first time I ever beheld a fiery jet of water in Mr. Smith's lecture-room, darkened for the purpose, it was to me a weird and memorable sight. It so happened that day that I had been up all night at some convivial party or other, and
Thus during the whole of that session, hardly a day went by without my witnessing in class some new and striking natural phenomenon in illustration of the subject under discussion. Those ingenious and beautiful demonstrations, artfully contrived and nearly always faultlessly executed, accompanied as they often were by Mr. Smith's ejaculations of wonder and delight, brought me face to face with Nature herself, unknown, mysterious power, sublime, indifferent, above all free from any taint of human error and superstition. This was the world in which I was born, and I myself was "a child of Nature cradled in her arms until my turn comes to die and to remain somewhere and somehow in her embrace"; so I thought to myself then in the budtime of youth, but not in those words, which were nearly the last words of my dear friend Dean Woodbridge of Columbia University. I can never forget his saying, with the childlike simplicity that was so characteristic of him, that to
As a teacher Professor Smith was not entirely without fault. Perhaps he yielded too much to his own enthusiasm and was sometimes tempted to dwell longer than necessary on a particular subject; the consequence being that when the bell tolled for the class to be dismissed, more often than not he had failed to cover the ground that had been laid out in advance. Accordingly, when the end of the session was at hand, the latter part of the course was usually not quite finished and had to be slurred over more or less summarily and inadequately.
Nevertheless, as I look back from the standpoint of ripe judgment and larger appreciation, I am deliberately of the opinion that in thoroughness of treatment and in excellence of presentation, perhaps most of all 'in being completely abreast of the modern conceptions of the science of that day, the lectures in Natural Philosophy which I heard in the University of Virginia in 1890 were much superior to any course of general physics that was then being given in the United States. Professor Tyndall's lectures at the Royal Institution in London, where the pace had been set first by Sir Humphrey Davy and afterwards by Michael Faraday, were indeed a little earlier than my time; yet I venture to say that Professor Smith's lectures compared favourably with Tyndall's in art of exposition and in vigour of language, while I doubt whether the latter was Professor Smith's equal in mathematical insight and scientific precision.
Mr. Smith was a pillar in the Methodist church and a man of deep religious convictions at the time when the "conflict" between religion and science was fierce and bitter. The cosmogony of the book of Genesis was being called in question by the new doctrines of geology and evolution. The three musketeers of science were Herbert Spencer in philosophy, Thomas H. Huxley in biology, and John Tyndall in physics; each of whom liked nothing better than to goad his orthodox adversary and
Professor Rowland at the Johns Hopkins University, who was my teacher also, was famous for having made a screw for his dividing engine which had such a fine and accurate thread that by means thereof he had been able to rule thousands of equal-space parallel lines within the width of an inch on a piece of speculum metal used for a diffraction-grating. In fact, it was such an excellent screw that in his enthusiasm Professor Rowland thought he might say it was simply perfect. However, a few years later the inventor announced that he had still further improved the original apparatus, and so one day in Senior Natural Philosophy Mr. Smith rubbed his hands and smiled blandly at us sitting there before him. "Now at last," said he, "Professor Rowland has succeeded in making a plusperfect screw."
For my part, shall I ever forget that it was "Frank Smith" who in the days of my youth held the lamp of science before my ardent eyes and lighted a kindred flame in me?
More than any man I ever knew, Dr. Mallet was imbued with the simplicity of the character of a gentleman, and such I believe
The Department of Chemistry was housed in a separate building opposite West Range and directly behind the brick structure that used to be Dr. Mallet's residence, and I think it occupied the site of the building that is now used by the Department of Psychology. The class in General Chemistry, perhaps the largest in college, comprised both academic and medical students. Unlike Professor Smith, Dr. Mallet had such poise and self-restraint, and was withal so impersonal in his manner and void of outward enthusiasm, that one might have supposed that his lecture was being delivered by an animated automaton mechanically incapable of making a mistake. No matter how much his audience might be carried away — and at times we were greatly impressed — it would have been something like sacrilege to applaud the speaker or disturb the even tenour of his careful exposition and expert illustrations that dovetailed together as if they were both of one piece. During the whole hour and a half allotted to the lecture, the genius of science hovered above our heads as if to invoke both meekness and reverence, and when the lecture was finished promptly at the stroke of the clock, everybody present was aware that not a word could be added or subtracted without impairing its scientific completeness. Then Dr. Mallet bowed stiffly, disappeared quickly through the door leading to the laboratory, and the class dispersed in silence with as much sobriety and decorum as a congregation leaving church. The speaker's farewell gesture had been as much as to say, "Here endeth the lesson. He that bath cars to hear, let him hear, for this is my last word on the subject of this lecture!"
There was a printed syllabus which served as a guide for the
On all ordinary occasions, in the classroom as well as on the campus, our instructors were genial and companionable enough, made of flesh and blood like ourselves. However, on the day of examination the professor's countenance was changed, his whole demeanour was cold and distant, and it seemed as if no drop of the milk of human kindness flowed in his veins. Now in those ancient days an examination was a formal and solemn ceremony that lasted all day long, sometimes far into the night. Your previous records, "corks" and "curls" both, counted for naught, for on that day all was at stake. The penalty of failure was as sure and unrelenting as the sentence pronounced by a British judge; only, there was no appeal and no amnesty. Nothing was left to be done except to take that subject again next year from start to finish, and indeed every year thereafter until the examination was duly passed. Woe to the delinquent who fell short of the requisite mark which was seventy-five per cent and even higher in Law and Medicine.
Not all the intervening years have blotted out the painful memory of that dies irae when I took the final examination in "Senior Natural." According to my recollection there were not more than about ten candidates for graduation that year, including, besides myself, Mallory K. Cannon, James H. Corbitt, C. L. DeMott, Joe Dunn (whose M. A. that year hinged on this examination), Snowden Marshall, and "Math" (James S.) Miller (who it seems to me was at the same time instructor in Natural Philosophy that year). The clock of the rotunda
Dr. Mallet, a member of the faculty committee appointed for holding the examination, showed his face in the torture-chamber during the course of the morning, as in duty bound, for Dr. Mallet never neglected any task however slight and unimportant. He and Mr. Smith held a whispered colloquy lasting only a few minutes and quite inaudible to our cars. Some jest or other passed between them, for both were shaking with subdued laughter. Such mirth was unseemly at that hour, and it irritated me. Then Dr. Mallet vanished as noiselessly as he had come, but the serene smile that lighted Mr. Smith's face lingered there all day.
Meanwhile my languid and irresolute pen had scarcely scrawled more than two or three aimless lines on the smooth sheet of foolscap paper spread on the writing bench before me. The questions on the blackboard were all so sinister and enigmatic that I was at a loss as to how to begin, and in desperation I tore that first sheet from the pad and began a new one, resolved to write something there, no matter how irrelevant it might be, for precious time was ebbing fast. Occasionally during that long and mournful day we paused to look around and exchange looks of silent misery with one another; then our hearts were filled with hatred towards "Frank Smith" whom we had loved once but who now had betrayed us. At length the shades of evening began to fall. It was getting dark; yet not one of us had finished his dreary task. When Henry Martin and another janitor tiptoed into the room to light the lamps, it was the signal of insurrection. With one accord we assembled
Yet the sequel of that examination was not as bad as we had feared. Strange to relate, I believe nearly all of us passed, even Joe Dunn who was certainly the most downhearted of that anxious group. After all, Mr. Smith's heart was not made of stone.
My good friend Dean Woodbridge, whose wise sayings I am fond of quoting, once pointed out the distinction between what is rational and what is reasonable. I remember his saying that it was like the difference between mind and soul, not a partition so much as a change of accent; for (said be) "when the soul thinks, it is mind; when the mind feels, it is soul." So likewise, he continued, "the rational is rigourous, impersonal and averse to compromise; the reasonable is yielding, personal, and makes compromise a virtue." Now the examination system at the University of Virginia was rational, no matter how absolutely unreasonable it may have been. It was rational inasmuch as it forced the student to strive with all his might and keep himself in trim as the athlete was bound to do who competed in the Olympic Games, and because it certainly accomplished its purpose if that purpose was to sift the chaff from the wheat. Yet it was wholly unreasonable forasmuch as it tossed the chaff aside as more or less worthless and without raison d'être at least from the point of view of the University itself. If such were indeed the purpose of this machinery, it must be admitted it was vastly efficient.
This "juggernaut" reached "an all-time high" in the session when Professor Thornton, who was then Dean of the School of Engineering, "flunked" every mother's son in the class in Kinematics and Dynamics. That was long after my day, and when I ventured once to ask Dean Thornton if the story really was true, he parried the question by saying that what he regretted most was being compelled the following year to discard an exceedingly meritorious textbook on the subject (written by Prof. J. G. Macgregor, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh) and substitute in place of it a much inferior book, simply because students were no better than dunces.
While I am far from defending the rigidity, not to say ruthlessness, of the examination system as it existed — when I was a student in the University of Virginia; yet I am bound to say
In some quarters it is getting to be the fashion to dispense with examinations altogether. The mere task of having to write a coherent and intelligent essay is in itself a useful exercise which is ample justification for requiring a student to stand a severe written examination. Anybody who has undergone the ordeal knows, if he is truthful about it, that in no other way could he have been made to get such a grasp of the subject as a whole and to comprehend its total significance.
Hardly anybody now alive is old enough ever to have seen and heard that boisterous old callithump known as a "dyke,"
The first "dyke" I ever witnessed took place, not long after I came to college, down on the old "Triangle" at the foot of the Lawn, which was the evening rendezvous of many a lovesick couple in the days before the Lawn was extended as far as Cabell Hill after the fire of 1895. That evening a big reception was being given in Mr. Minor's home to which, I suppose, nearly all the élite in the neighbourhood had been ceremoniously invited some days earlier. Soon after dark, the guests began to arrive, generally two at a time, a lady and the gentleman who escorted tier. Presently a solitary figure, arrayed in his best
The last of these obnoxious performances was in the next session (1889-90) when a man named Bondurant, highly and justly esteemed by those who knew him, perhaps a little dandified in demeanour, was in the act of escorting Mary Mallet to a party that was being given one evening in the Chaplain's House in Gildersleeve Wood, unless I am mistaken, for now so many of the old landmarks are obliterated that I cannot always be sure about the location of the old places in and around the University. According to the accepted code, a gentleman who went to a party with a lady on his arm was inviolable and sacrosanct, but on this occasion our hero was really too tempting a prey to be permitted to escape, for he actually had on a swallow-tail coat and his wing collar was adorned by a white muslin butterfly-tie! To be sure, the lady had stepped across the threshold in safety, but Mr. Bondurant was perhaps two paces behind her and not yet quite inside the doorway. He did contrive to follow her, but not without the loss of one of his coattails that
However, public indignation on this occasion was so outspoken, and the outrage so flagrant, that the hilarious sport of "dyking" simply died a natural death and has never been heard of again from that day to this.
The session of 1889-90 was the year too when Martha Bagby, famous Richmond belle, came for a visit to Dr. William C. Dabney's family who lived in the pavilion at the north end of East Lawn that had been Dr. Cabell's residence for so many years. Naturally her advent made a great flutter not only from Dawson's Row to Carr's Hill but in town and county also as
The booth for the post office was located in a little alcove at the rear of the big drawing room near the foot of a winding stairway that led to the upper storey of Dr. Dabney's home, and accordingly, on the appointed evening and at a concerted signal,
Who said, This girl, I will catch her!
But the 'Melican man,
Though he does all he can,
Can't beat the Chinee, you betcha!
I do not remember the wording of the note that was sent to Raleigh Minor, but I know it was not in verse but in sober prose and made him furious. At that period of his existence he seldom missed spending an evening downtown on Park Street in speechless adoration of Martha Southall. The message he got purported to be from her dignified father and stated succinctly that owing to the steadily increasing throng of visitors that came to see his
Now as all these revelations proceeded to be divulged without the slightest regard for the laws of civilized society, the temper of the company, instead of getting gayer and gayer, got glummer and glummer. Every new victim waited with mingled terror and indignation for his or her turn to come, and everybody glared at the postmaster with hatred, as if lynching would be too good for him if he got what he deserved. Under the circumstances I was beginning to feel a good deal of concern, and I must confess I stumbled over my lines. The ticking of the grandfather's clock at the foot of the stairs was plainly louder and louder; but the greatest uneasiness of all came at the moment when, happening to glance behind me, I was just in time to perceive Martha Bagby, the cynosure of every eye, disappearing upstairs around the curve in the bannisters. When the game started, she had been sitting on the bottom step, keen with excitement, and prepared to prompt me if I made a mistake. Heaven knows I was in need of tier help, though I never could catch tier whisper, it was confused with so much giggling. Yet withal she was a lady of singular discernment, and when she sensed the way the wind was blowing or even when she saw that there was not any breeze at all and the atmosphere was stagnant as it was that evening, she could take to her heels as fist as any minx and leave me to perish all alone in my guilt. The simple fact was that amid the deathlike silence that greeted each letter as it was read aloud, Miss Martha had deliberately mounted one step higher on the winding stairway until at last she vanished out of sight. Then whatever courage I had left ebbed out as gas oozes from a pricked balloon. A heap of unread letters was still before me when, in a quavering voice, I announced that the game was ended; a minute later I
It bid fair to be a dismal ending of what had started out to be a gay party, but then refreshments were served, mighty good refreshments that were efficacious for dispersing spleen and all uncharitableness. Martha Bagby descended once more into the arena, and when she told the guests goodnight, everybody said how sweet and charming she was, and nobody was to blame but me. Then she set to work to heal my wounds and told me I had been simply wonderful, while everybody else was stupid, and of course I believed her, for under the soft touch of woman man is as putty.
Everybody knows of course that the head and arms are both missing from the figure of the Winged Victory (Niké de Samothrace) in the Louvre, and therefore it is no wonder that the student from the University of Texas, seeing this beautiful statue for the first time, and being told its name, exclaimed, "God help Defeat!" When Martha Bagby told me I had covered myself with glory in the game of "post office," I wondered how it must feel to be covered with shame.
It was in the spring of 1889, when I still lived on Monroe Hill, that Murray Mason McGuire (1872-1945), younger son of my revered teacher, came to the University with a baseball team from Richmond and tarried there several days as my guest. Young as he was at that time, his fame as a pitcher and wizard for "down-shoots" and puzzling curves had gone abroad already,
Before the end of the calendar year of 1889, the first number of the weekly newspaper called College Topics made its appearance under the joint editorship of Hunt Chipley and Legh Page; and by the end of the session (1889-90) Breckinridge Robertson had been appointed editor-in-chief with "Kit" (Adam C.) Carson as assistant editor. Breckinridge was now forging ahead in prominence and was soon to become, especially during the next three or four years, one of the foremost students in college. In 1893 he and Carson were sworn political foes.
Certainly in the 1880's and all during the time I was in college, hardly any honour to be obtained by a student was considered to be greater than an invitation to join the famous society of Eli Banana, as indeed I daresay is still the case. Eli Banana was not so much an order of merit as it was a badge of distinction, coveted by all but obtained by few. The Eli's were known to be jolly good fellows who, whether or not they had come to college on purpose to have a good time, certainly seemed to all the rest of us to have achieved that purpose. Yet among them there was a goodly sprinkling of members such, for instance, as Hampden Bagby and Archer Anderson, who were not just dashing leaders of society, perhaps addicted also to going on sprees, but who ranked at the top in all intellectual pursuits and might even be models of sobriety.
Allen Potts, noted athlete, destined to marry Gertrude Rives, was an Eli who, as far as I know, never touched a drop of liquor all the time he was in college. Yet on the festive day of initiation of new recruits, when the big drum sounded loud and long and
It was during the earlier half of this same session, not long before Christmas I believe, that the TILKA society was founded as a kind of rival of Eli Banana, perhaps originally intended to be on a little higher plane. The charter members included the following prominent students in college: Hunt Chipley, Joe Dunn, E. E. Garrett, Edwin Gibson, J. Leighton Hubard, W. H. Thompson Loyall, Joseph McElroy, Raleigh Minor, Sidney M. Neely, Sherrard Tabb, Robert Tunstall Taylor, Walter H. Taylor,
That session Raleigh Minor was elected final president of the Jefferson Literary Society, without opposition, and the DKE's were all elated. As alumni orator at The Finals, Mr. Lawrence Marye delivered a long and scholarly address, which was dull and tedious to me and perhaps to others also, for on such occasions the audience was easily bored and not always courteous. Among the graduates who were distinguished that year were: Joseph B. Dunn, Halstead S. Hedges, James B. Lovett, and Walter F. Taylor, each of whom got the degree of M. A.; Otto G. Ramsay, William M. Randolph, and James B. Woods, all three of whom graduated in Medicine; and P. H. C. Cabell, Charles F. Fenner, John D. Fletcher, Felix H. Levy, H. Dent Minor, John B. Minor, Jr., Raleigh C. Minor, Jefferson Davis Norris, Edward W. Robertson, Minton W. Talbot, and John Wilson, who all got their hard-earned B. L.'s. The above list from memory is far from complete, but I hope it is accurate as far as it goes.
Nobody could have been more inconspicuous than I was at The Finals of 1890, and what I remember best about it now, indeed almost the only thing I can recall, is that it was the time when Annie Doggett came from Richmond and was the guest of Nannie Minor. Now she was a mighty pretty maiden, and, consequently, I took her around the nine-mile circuit as many times as I could persuade the keeper of the livery stable to let me have a horse and buggy for the purpose; yet it was all in vain!
Another chap, whom I cannot forgive to this day, took her around the twelve-mile circuit and cut me out entirely! She had too many strings to her bow or too many beaux on her string — you see even now I am tongue-tied and cannot tell exactly how it was. Cardinal Wolsey charged Cromwell to fling away ambition; so when Mr. A. D. Payne sent me the livery-stable bill, I flung it out the window, and no doubt lost pretty Annie Doggett at the same time.
Truth to say, at the end of the session of 1889-90, not everything was as I might have wished and hoped; yet, notwithstanding, my second session in the University of Virginia had been a good and joyful year for me, the best of all that had gone before, annus mirabilis. That year I had peeped into the realm of science, my lips had touched the fruit of a new tree of knowledge, and I had found that it was sweet to my taste. Now the session had ended, the campus was deserted, and Annie Doggett had returned in triumph to Richmond. I stood alone on the Lawn, it was night, and the stars were overhead, I asked myself the question, Dic cur hic? and could get no answer.
Far, far ahead is all her seaman know
IV
FIRST GLIMPSE IN NATURE'S REALM
1889-1890
In the days of my youth when I was a student in the University of
Virginia, 1888-1893. | ||