University of Virginia Library

PRELUDE: BOYHOOD IN RICHMOND
1871-1888

ALMOST MY EARLIEST RECOLLECTION OF RICHMOND, WHERE I grew up, is the scene of a vast concourse of people assembled in Capitol Square between the Washington Monument and the Governor's Mansion, to witness the unveiling of the statue of Stonewall Jackson, and to listen to Dr. Hoge's eloquent oration which was a chief part of the ceremony on that impressive occasion. That was in 1875 when I was four years old; yet somehow I was certainly there that day in the midst of the throng, and while I remember the spectacle almost as vividly as if I had seen it yesterday, I cannot recall whether I was with my mother and father or simply with my dear old mammy, Malvina. In those days of my early boyhood, Richmond on the James, outwardly, not yet inwardly recovered from the ugly scars of the Civil War, was an historic and picturesque old residential town that stretched or sprawled several miles from Church Hill — the site of St. John's Church where Patrick Henry a century ago had shouted "Give me liberty, or give me death! "— westward as far as Hollywood Cemetery, where

The port of Rocketts at the foot of Church Hill and just below the Falls of James River was the head of tidewater, as far up the big river as a steamer could come; so if you had a mind to go to Norfolk by the sea about a hundred miles away, you might get on board a side-wheeler, somewhat ironically called the Ariel, which used to leave the wharf at Rocketts early in the morning and was lucky if it got to Norfolk by bedtime that evening. How ever, if you were in a hurry, you had another alternative and could go by train, changing cars in Petersburg; although, even then it was doubtful whether you would reach Norfolk ahead of the Ariel, for in the days of my youth trains in Virginia were almost invariably long behind time. Time was not so precious then as it is now, and the truth is it usually did not matter much when you reached your destination.

Practically all the years of my boyhood were spent in Richmond until I was old enough to go to college. During the long hot summers when nearly everybody left town, we migrated to .one of the resorts in the mountains of Virginia, perhaps occasionally to Nantucket or to some other delightful place in New England. They were sunlit days for me, winter and summer, unclouded by sorrow or any unhappiness that I can now recall; and uneventful as they undoubtedly were for the most part, to me they seemed full of novelty and adventure. A round of pleasure must be shared in order for it to be duly appreciated and enjoyed by others. The mere description of it is usually hardly worth telling and more often than not is tedious and unprofitable. If it never was your lot to go on a hayride by moonlight in a creaking old wagon loaded down with boys and girls to a rather dilapidated old country mansion in Goochland County, a dozen miles or more from Richmond, where "there was a sound of revelry by night"; and if, arriving at the festival in the gayest mood, you never knew the unspeakable bliss of being almost instantly chosen to dance "chum-turn-a-loo" with a heavenly beautiful little maiden in a blue frock tied with a pink sash, then why do I waste the time or take the trouble to tell you that all

that was exactly what happened to me once upon a time? She was Bruce Williams, and though I never afterwards touched the hem of her garment or whispered a word in her car, the vision of her radiant loveliness that evening in Goochland and the glory that encompassed me then has never faded in all the years that have come and gone! Perhaps to you that episode does not seem to deserve the name of high adventure; yet I know you would have envied me had you been at that party. When tardy Crillon came riding up to King Henry of Navarre just after a great battle had been fought and won, the latter greeted him by saying, "Hang yourself, brave Crillon! We fought at Arques, and you were not there." Besides, when you get to be an old man as I am now, curiously enough it is just such an incident or accident — as a moonlight ride and a country dance when you wore your first pair of long trousers that will stand out in retrospection as the high point of a long and active life.

When I got to be quite a big lad, perhaps in my early teens, I used to hear much talk around my father's dinner table and among his friends concerning the huge Prussian army in Europe, all booted and spurred and ready at a moment's notice to be unleashed by the young German Kaiser and launched overpoweringly against England or any other foe that stood in its way. Already France and her vainglorious emperor had been laid prostrate under the heel of the Iron Chancellor. I listened to the animated conversation open-mouthed, yet half incredulous, little dreaming then how true and deadly in earnest these ominous forebodings were and that my whole life, almost literally from the cradle to the grave, was destined to be overshadowed, thwarted, and more or less completely deranged by ruthless and devastating wars the like of which had never yet been on earth. A frequent and honoured guest in my father's home in Richmond in my boyhood days was Major Taylor Berry, eminent and distinguished senator from Amherst County in the Virginia state legislature, a handsome and cultivated gentleman beloved by each

one of our household, old and young. He seldom came to the house, it seems to me now, without bringing some little gift or other, either for my mother or for me or my little sister; and one day I remember his giving my father a slender little volume bound in green cloth called The Battle of Dorking, which long afterwards was in my own library for many years, though now I am unable to find it. It was a fictitious but plausible and highly realistic story of a sudden and irresistible German invasion of England in the 1870's or 1880's, ending tragically enough (as I recall it from memory) in another battle of Hastings and the subjugation of Queen Victoria and all her dominions. For aught I know it was in this ominous little volume (first published, I believe, in 1870 that I heard for the first time the boast of Deutschland ueber Alles and learned to know that England was Germany's archenemy that had to be crushed at all costs; but that was many years before Jewish Lissauer composed the Hymn of Hate (1914) and shouted above the din of battle for all the world to hear that "French and Russians, they matter not," for "we have one foe, and one alone, England!"

The famous anecdote about old Marshal Blucher's one and only visit to London soon after the battle of Waterloo, I remember hearing at my father's table, perhaps from the lips of the Honorable John Randolph Tucker who was a member of Congress then and a very notable man. The grim, taciturn old soldier took little stock in sight-seeing; yet as he stood on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral and gazed over the great city, its size and wealth impressed him and he was heard to mutter, Was fuer Plunder, "What a city to loot!"

The frightful Civil War in the United States that had laid waste the South and impoverished all its inhabitants had ended at Appomattox just six years before I was born. As boys and girls in school we used to read with tears in our eyes, sometime with vows of vengeance on our lips such mournful dirges as "I the land where we were dreaming," "Furl that banner, for 'tis weary," and other laments over "the lost cause"; nor was there

one among us, I verily believe, who did not hope to live to avenge his country's wrongs one day. Yet north and south nothing was really farther from the thoughts of both old and young than the apprehension of a world-wide war which was even then in the making and could have been foreseen if it could not be forestalled. So we lived, those of us who survived, in blissful ignorance until the day, Der Tag, came at last in August, 1914, when the long-awaited signal sounded and the German legions tramped through Belgium. Behind us lies the past, stretched out in long centuries with its history all unfolded for our guidance and instruction; the present, too, is all around us and open to view in every direction, even though we ourselves are too dull to interpret the omens and cannot discern what is plainly coming to birth before our eyes; only the dark and inscrutable future is mercifully opaque and lies hidden in the womb of Time. I wonder how I have the effrontery to repeat such trite and commonplace reflections. Yet who can cease to hope that soon or late, in God's good time, a day will come at last when the poor inhabitants of the town of Mansoul, which from generation to generation has endured so many sieges and heartbreaking calamities, will learn once for all the hard lessons of experience or at least will not go on making the same mistakes until like Carthage to the ground and made desolate forevermore.

The peaceful scenes of my childhood are all clustered around three notable towns of the Old Dominion: Richmond, which was the home of my father and mother from the time they were married in 1869 until about a year after I went to college; Norfolk, where my mother, as wise and witty as she was gay and beautiful, had been a reigning belle in her day, and where, as luck would have it, I was born first, in 1871, and then my dear little sister Evelyn in 1873; and Charlottesville, my father's native village surrounded by the pleasant hills of Albemarle, where I often spent a part of the long summer in the gay and hospitable home of my cousins. Both Norfolk and Charlottesville abounded

in uncles, aunts, and cousins, and at least once every year during my childhood, Evelyn and I used to go with Mother to Norfolk to visit my grandmother who lived on Freemason Street with my Aunt Evelyn Sharp, An Irish woman named Kate was my grandmother's housekeeper; she was a devout Catholic and a very superior person, who ruled over the establishment with a rod of iron. Evelyn and I stood in much awe of Kate and never dared to disobey her, but her authority was tempered with so much benevolence that we were both fondly attached to her.

My father, older than my mother by a score of years, had many accomplishments and distinctions, and was indeed a scholar, though more renowned abroad than at home. He was a man of quiet tastes, warm compassionate affections, and much simplicity of character; yet he loved retirement and seldom went far from his own fireside. It was a pity, for without doubt he was not only one of the best talkers I ever heard, but a sympathetic listener too, and everybody, young and old, welcomed his presence and enjoyed his intercourse. In antebellum days he had been a staunch Whig in politics and a strong "Union man," and in the bitter days of Reconstruction, it came to pass that he was elected as one of the small minority of conservative delegates to the so-called Underwood Convention that met in Richmond in 1868. There he did everything in his power to thwart the radical majority bent on the humiliation and degradation of the Old Dominion. A speech he made in that assembly in defense of "white supremacy" lifted him into prominence as a leader in those anxious and turbulent days. I cannot remember ever hearing my father allude to his incursion into active politics, but years afterwards Dr. Moses D. Hoge in a tribute which he paid to my father wrote that the state of Virginia owed him a debt for coming to her aid in time of need. A realistic description of the strange composition of the Underwood Convention is given by an eyewitness in John S. Wise's book called The Lion's Skin, from' which the following extract, containing a reference to my father, is taken. A newspaper reporter named Jimmie Cowardin

is represented as pointing out the celebrities of that motley assembly of whites and blacks to one of his friends standing in the gallery of the hall:

"Turning to the comer where the little group of real Virginians was seated, he said, 'If you want to see a fish out of water, look at that man,' pointing to a tall, scholarly, serious .man, who sat at his desk absorbed in a pile of public documents. He seemed to pay little attention to the rising tumult about him. As if he were in a decent, orderly body, he was making notes from time to time like a man preparing for a thoughtful presentation of a serious matter to a body that would listen to him and weigh his arguments. It was James C. Southall, of Albemarle, who was very well known to Carrington as a gentleman of character and ability.

" 'He looks like a good deed in a naughty world,' said Jimmie Cowardin."[*]

As long as he lived, my father was my beau ideal, both friend and companion, whom I worshiped as well as loved. The mutual affection between father and son sometimes passeth all understanding, and certainly my father's love of me was beyond measure. Often after midday dinner, perhaps around four o'clock in the afternoon, he was wont to put on his beaver hat, take his stick in hand, and go for a long walk for exercise; and then it was my delight to join him, and hand in hand together we used to tramp literally from one end of the town to the other, sometimes as far as the new reservoir past Hollywood, maybe in the opposite direction to old St. John's Church on Church Hill, or more often than not over one of the long bridges to Manchester on the other side of the James River. In those uncivil days Manchester was a

butt of derision and a shining mark for every minstrel show that came to town. One of the stories that went the rounds was that the Devil himself could not bear to get a carload of sinners from Manchester simply because they were invariably "too green to burn." That was the kind of sally that brought down the house at Mrs. Powell's old "Richmond Theatre" which stood at the corner of Broad and Seventh streets. Then it was the only playhouse in the city, barring "Mozart Hall" on Eighth Street which was not much more than a long wooden barn with a curved roof over it. Not only did Mrs. Powell own the theatre, but, what was a greater boast still, she was the mother of Jim Powell, a tall, handsome fellow with a moustache, captain and first baseman of the "Virginias," the most renowned baseball team in the old Eastern League. Joe Jefferson, Lily Langtry, Sol Smith Russell, Booth, Robson and Crane, Hermann the Magician, and I know not how many other celebrated actors of those days — at one time or other I saw all of them on the stage of the old Richmond Theatre, not in my father's company (for he seldom went inside the theatre, as far as I can remember), but usually with my gay mother or perhaps with Uncle William Southall whenever he came to town from his farm near Ivy in Albemarle and was bent on having a good time.

Those rambles with my father in the environs of Richmond were full of entertainment for me, and when we came home late in the evening and sat down to supper, Mother and Evelyn had to listen to a long story of exciting adventure from beginning to end. I asked for nothing better on this earth than to walk by my father's side all the days of my life, and I should be thankful now if I could say that I had never ceased to follow in his footsteps. When he died in 1897, 1 was a grown man and

the saddest day of my life it seemed to me then, as it still seems to me now.

Mother and I were more nearly the same age, and the three of us, including my little sister, used to romp together upstairs and downstairs and all over the house from attic to basement. Mother's laughter was contagious, ending often in a spontaneous burst of song, for she had a wonderfully true and melodious voice and sang with as much abandon and unselfconsciousness as if she had been a lark in the sky. Every Friday evening for several years after I had got to be a fairly big lad, I used to escort her to choir practice in old St. Paul's Church by Capitol Square. There she, Jeannie Blow, Mr. Hoff, and other members of the choir, including one of Dr. Minnegerode's pretty and vivacious daughters, perhaps also Mr. Poindexter, who I believe played the organ (but here my memory may be at fault), made a hilarious party and practiced every art of merriment, it seemed to me, rather than the hymns and canticles they had to sing on Sunday. Meanwhile I sat all by myself off to one side in the dim unlighted gallery, a supernumerary if ever there was one, waiting as patiently as possible for the hour to come when choir practice would be over and it was time to go home. I liked to hear Mother sing, for her voice had an extraordinary range of uncommon sweetness and power from high soprano to something akin to bass profound — sometimes I could hardly believe it was not a man I heard singing in mother's room upstairs when she was dressing to go to a party — but her art was spontaneous and entirely uncultivated. She got older of course as the years went by; yet never a wrinkle furrowed her lovely brow, and while her hair got thinner, it never was really Grey, although I know she was sensitive about it and wore a braid when she was an old lady. To me she was like Bacchus, "ever fair and ever young," gay and sparkling to the end of her days. My father was her proudest and most outspoken admirer. He knew she was unrivaled in beauty and gracefulness, but he marveled most of all at her intellectual gifts and extraordinary power of comprehension. She had an unerring faculty for using the precise word or phrase needed to clarify an argument and clinch it beyond

dispute. Often she would be the only woman present in a room full of "most potent, grave, and reverend signiors," all notable men and much older than she was, such, for instance, as Dr. William H. Ruffner, the great Superintendent of Public Instruction, Colonel W. W. Gorden, one of the most brilliant lawyers in all the land and famous for his wit and wisdom, the Honorable Frank G. Ruffin, Major Isaac Carrington, Dr. Hunter McGuire, Judge Robert Ould, the Reverend Dr. Minnegerode, and many other eminent men whom I used to see in my father's house from time to time. When it might be supposed that the subject under discussion was of absolutely no concern to my mother, suddenly and most unexpectedly she would quietly let fall from her lips some oracular speech or apt commentary that by common consent hit the nail squarely on the head, leaving nothing more to be said. My father took delight in observing how everybody, old and young alike, acknowledged Mother's supremacy in wit.

In science and religion as well as in politics, my father nearly always had an uphill fight, and was well aware of being on the losing side and of having to lead a forlorn hope. Two scholarly books, the first entitled The Recent Origin of Man (Philadelphia and London, 1875) and a subsequent volume on The Epoch of the Mammoth (London, 1878), to which the author himself attached the greater importance, had spread his fame in learned circles more even in Europe than at home. My recollection is that it was under the auspices of the Victoria Institute in England, of which he was a member, and in company with other members of that society, that in 1881 he undertook — the exploration of the valley of the Somme in France in search of traces of prehistoric man. This foreign expedition involved an extended sojourn in Europe for all our little household and proved to be a rich experience in our lives. Evelyn was then eight years of age and I was just two years older, both old enough to relish novelty and adventure and gain some incidental profit.

It was considerably more than a year afterwards that we returned to our home in Richmond. Then it was our dear mother's pride and delight to exhibit Evelyn, and me in public, clad in the native costumes of all the foreign lands we had visited. I cannot recall distinctly all the varied and vivid frocks that were worn by Evelyn, certainly to the astonishment and possibly to the envy of her playmates, but my own wardrobe, I can solemnly testify, outshone Joseph's coat of many colours and was wondrous to behold. For one costume, I had an Eton jacket surmounted by collar and beaver and fittingly continued below by a pair of long trousers which roused all the other little boys in Richmond, with one accord, to something like frenzy. One memorable day I ventured outdoors arrayed as Little Lord Fauntleroy, and the mystery is how I ever got back home in safety; yet all I remember now is the indignant taunts and jeers hurled at me by the populace. Perhaps the worst experience of all was when I sallied forth, unwillingly enough, in Scotch kilt and tartan, lacking only dirk and claymore to be as complete a Highlander as was ever seen on land or sea, though those weapons might have stood me in good stead that day. This time, before I had proceeded more than a block from the door of the house, I was assailed by a band of urchins and young ruffians who were so plainly in dead earnest that I lost no time in beating a hasty retreat, being pelted not only with abuse but by hard missiles as well. An ugly mob gathered in front of our house where I was barricaded inside until a policeman came across the street and dispersed it much to my relief. Yet all that' day after changing into ordinary and inconspicuous attire I was exceedingly wary about showing my face on the street. With as much solemnity as Lars Porsena when he swore by the Nine Gods of Clusium he would suffer wrong no more, I told my dear mother that nothing would ever induce me to put on one of those hateful costumes again, and by that time she herself was ready to yield.

I never knew what became of all those garments which Mother had purchased for me in Europe with so much pride, and the

subject was never again mentioned. Yet for her sake I had to submit, ungraciously and churlishly enough, to one last compromise; for one day out of a clear sky she took Evelyn and me to Cook's photographic studio on Main Street and employed that celebrated artist to take our pictures in romantic fashion. I stood at the prow and Evelyn sat at the stern of an artificial rowboat which was one of the theatrical properties of that up-to-date establishment. The boat seemed to be moored to some foreign shore, but our attire was so elegant and faultless that it was evident the voyage had not been rough and that we were not expecting to encounter any savages in ambush. That dismal picture is still extant in an old family album, and I am always mortified when I am constrained to acknowledge that it is a true and authentic portrait of brother and sister when they were around ten and eight years old, respectively.

Not in my father's study only but in nearly every room of our house bookcases piled with books stood against the walls, and it would have been strange indeed if in that atmosphere I had not early in life acquired a taste for reading. The first book that came into my own possession was a little duodecimo copy of Aesop's Fables, illustrated by quaint old-fashioned woodcuts which took up the upper half of every left-hand page. The title page of the little volume is gone, but as well as I can make out, it was published in Philadelphia perhaps about 1825. It had belonged originally to my father when he was a boy, and according to a notation in his handwriting he had purchased it from old Mr. Wertenbaker, first librarian of the University of Virginia. It had been rebound by Messrs. Woodhouse and Parham in Richmond and presented to me by my father in 1875. 1 got to know this book almost by heart. At the end of each fable, there was a moral (or "application," as it was called) in smaller type and often longer than the story itself, which was all the more mysterious to me because I never could tell what the connection was with the text that preceded it. Thus, for example, concerning

the adventure of "The ass in the lion's skin," the sagacious editor, evidently a "Britisher," commented as follows: "How strangely absurd it is for a timourous person to procure a military post, in order to keep himself out of danger! and to fancy a redcoat the surest protection of cowardice!" Apt and acute as this observation may appear to me now, I thought it was out of place and farfetched when I was a little boy about five years old. I knew the ass was a stupid fellow and had made a fool of himself, but how a cowardly soldier was mixed up with this business was beyond my youthful comprehension. Certainly it is true enough that not everybody is cut out to be a soldier, and I can well imagine what a ridiculous figure I myself would be in the uniform of a captain or major in the army. During the Spanish-American War in 1898, 1 remember jocularly reproaching a village blacksmith in Bedford County, Virginia, for not going to the front and joining Colonel Theodore Roosevelt's famous company. of Rough Riders; whereupon, he drew himself to his full height and retorted instantly, almost indignantly, "Sir, I would rather live for my country than die for it!"

Another noteworthy book associated with my early years was Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The copy I owned was a rather ornate and handsome edition that had been bestowed as a prize by my Sunday School teacher, Miss Annie Glasgow, whose dear memory is enshrined in my heart with all the admiration and love she inspired in me in those far-off days when I was an irreverent little boy not worthy to sit avher feet. She was the eldest sister of the famous novelist who at that time (1880) was herself just a little girl with a pigtail hanging down her back and whom I used to see every Sunday morning sitting demurely in her father's pew in Dr. Hoge's church. Every boy in the class adored and worshiped Miss Annie Glasgow as if she had been a goddess from on high, good and wise as she was blithe and beautiful. To a little boy the loveliness of woman is an awesome sight to see.

If my adored Sunday School teacher had given me the Koran to read, I would have waded through it for her sweet sake and

bowed down before Allah. Pilgrim's Progress was for me in those days a thrilling story of adventure from the very moment when Christian, abandoning his wife and children, fled in terror from the City of Destruction. He may not have invented the slogan of "Safety first! " but he certainly ought to be given the credit of the original idea. The interest of the narrative was sustained throughout by his failing into one terrible predicament after another in such quick succession that the poor man seemed. to me never to have a breathing spell from the day he started on his journey. The numerous pictures with which the book was illustrated illuminated every stage of the pilgrim's progress and brought the scenes before me as vividly as if I had followed him step by step along his rough road. One of these pictures I remember still almost as clearly as if it were now before my eyes. No wonder it made a lasting impression, for it showed the dreadful prospect from the summit of Mount Caution where Christian and Hopeful could discern far down in the valley below a woeful group of blind men groping and stumbling about in a wilderness of tombs, the luckless victims of Giant Despair of Doubting Castle. In the days of my youth that infamous scoundrel bore the palm of being the wickedest monster and tyrant that had ever lived, but now I know that evil geniuses more cruel and sinister than Giant Despair have really flourished on earth, not just during the reigns of the Twelve Caesars but in our own times also.

Pilgrim's Progress was the first, but not the only, prize I got at school; for the very next year, before going to Europe, when I was a pupil in Miss Julia Sully's private and select school for little boys and girls of my own age — conducted in the basement of her home on Franklin Street less than half a block from Capitol Square — my diligence. and aptitude were rewarded at the end of the session by the public presentation of Plutarch's Lives in four volumes. The inscription on the flyleaf of each volume is still to be seen in the old-fashioned and beautiful handwriting of Miss Julia Sully's mother, an elegant old lady whom I can just dimly remember seated in a big armchair by the window looking

out on the street, with a lace cap on her head and a ball of worsted in her lap, the personification of antique grace and dignity.

Of course, there was much in Plutarch's Lives that was over the head of a boy ten years old and beyond his ken, but for all that it was here that I got my first glimpse of

and learned to know at least the names of the chief actors in all that thrilling story. I suppose no book was ever written that has been more sought after and enjoyed from generation to generation, as it was certainly one of the first of ancient writings to be brought from the cloisters of the mediaeval scholars and translated in the modem languages. In the pages of these volumes the long procession of famous men passed before my eyes one by one, it seemed to me, almost as real and lifelike as if I beheld them in flesh and blood, yet never quite as ordinary mortals but more like supermen who had flourished in an heroic age long past and gone forever.

The impression left on the mind by a book that has been pored over in childhood is apt to be indelible, even if the book itself is perhaps an inferior one of little or no intrinsic merit or virtue. But when the book in question is at the same time a work of genius approved and attested from generation to generation, as was the case with each of the three books that happened to fall into my hands soon-after I had learned to read, the influence continues to be felt more or less consciously as long as life lasts. When I seek to trace "those first affections" of 'early youth, a certain intrusion of sentiment enters in my recollections and leads me to question my own veracity. Yet after all it seems to me now that the book of all others that penetrated below the skin and left its deepest mark on me was, strange to say, Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar, for it was a work of genius also. Perhaps I was fourteen years old when I encountered that masterpiece for the first time and began to feel in some mysterious way that

it was flesh of my flesh. The time came when I could recite whole pages of this volume literally by heart, not just the jingles and rhymes devised on purpose to aid the memory, such, for example, as (containing the list of masculine nouns of the third declension ending in -is), but long involved rules of syntax also that are absolutely unintelligible except to the initiated and those who are by nature the children of light. That singular little volume abounded in admonitions and sibylline utterances, gently, so to speak stealthily, inserted in the main text in smaller type, not one of which was ever to be passed over lightly, much less disregarded entirely, for sooner or later any such transgression was sure to fall heavily. on the head of the offender. It was in those inconspicuous notes or obiter dicta that the author, who for aught I knew dwelt on the summit of high Olympus or at any rate spoke with all the authority of Moses on Mount Sinai, was wont to let fall pearls of great price couched in the form of casual remarks, brief and pithy as epigrams. For dunces each such observation was a veritable stumbling block, but to the wise and wary it was a beacon light! "The participle is transient; the adjective permanent" — thus the truth was revealed without a word of preparation or explanation. Or again — "The Imperfect as the Tense of Evolution is a Tense of Vision"— who could gainsay it? When I came across some saying like that for the first time, it was almost as if the author himself had stooped down and whispered it in my ear and then left me to brood over it. Dutifully, but all in vain, I revolved it in my mind and sought to fathom the meaning; until at length in the midst of the darkness a light shone, the mist dissolved before my eyes, and the cryptic speech was crystal-clear and fraught with truth. Yet nowhere was the genius of the author so manifest as in the extraordinary power of putting in idiomatic English the precise meaning of a Latin sentence which he lifted by way of illustration apart from its context from the great reservoir of Roman literature which seemed to he always in reach just in order to serve his purpose at the moment. Many of Dr. Gildersleeve's inimitable translations have stuck in my memory from that day to this. Patriae quis exsul se quoque fugit? "What exile from his country ever fled himself as well?"

"Some books, Lord Bacon said, "are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." As far .as I was concerned, Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar belonged in the last category. It was hard to assimilate, but I do not begrudge the time and labour I spent on it.

As well as I can recollect now, I think it must have been soon after we moved to live in our last home in Richmond, on Marshall Street, perhaps in 1882, that I began my first year as a pupil in McGuire's School for boys which was then located on Gamble's Hill not more than a block from the end of South Third Street. The schoolrooms were all on the ground floor of Mr. McGuire's residence in the fine old house which used to be Colonel Gamble's home, in the midst of a spacious yard so high above the level of the street that two long wooden stairways led up to it from the sidewalk far below, one for the front yard on the north side of the house and the other for the back yard on the side towards the river. During considerably more than half a century since my school days, the destruction of old landmarks in both Richmond and Norfolk has gone on relentlessly almost as if it were in obedience to some inexorable law like that of the degradation of energy in physics. Even prior to 18—, the old Gamble mansion had been completely demolished, and the commanding eminence on which it stood was unceremoniously carved down to the level of the street until now not a vestige remains of that once lordly site, much less of the habitation that stood upon it, where I first began to study the rudiments of Latin, Greek, and Algebra.

Old folks, I know, are only too prone to boast of long

experience and superior wisdom, and no doubt I merely flatter myself in thinking I have reached the age of discretion when it is easy to tell true metal from false. Be that as it may, let me pause here reverently for a brief moment in order to pay tribute, long deferred but perhaps for that very reason all the more heartfelt and generous, to the highly competent teachers who took me by the hand and guided my footsteps in the three or four years when I was under their tutelage in McGuire's School.

Mr. McGuire (or the "boss" as we fondly called him, some times also "Molly" after the notorious brigand of those days) was the "principal" of that famous academy, for the term "head master" was not then in use in Virginia. His father before him, whose name he bore, was a clergyman who had been principal of the Episcopal High School near Alexandria until the Civil War came and put an end to his employment; and the son following in the footsteps of his father was the founder of McGuire's School in Richmond which was destined to flourish in that city with undiminished vigour not only as long as he himself lived but throughout nearly all the long life of his own son and successor down to a few years ago. The three John Peyton McGuire's are a noble lineage of great school teachers from grandsire to grandson whose pupils from one generation to the next have unceasingly loved and honoured each of them in turn. If ever a man was anointed from on high for his task on earth, it was the principal of McGuire's School in the 1880's when I was one of his most unworthy and obstreperous pupils and certainly one of the most devoted to him. In Latin and Algebra he was the best drill-master a schoolboy could possibly have, and his mild and inflexible discipline was so just and righteous, withal so full of the milk of human kindness, that not even the most unlicked cub ever dreamed of rebelling against his authority or could fail to be subdued by his benevolence.

Among the accomplished assistants who surrounded the principal, about the middle of the 1880's, were James Morris, handsome and upright as a Roman youth, who I believe was, for quite

a number of years afterwards, rector of old Monumental Church where the Reverend Dr. Armstrong created a stir when I was a lad in Richmond and used to get an inkling of the gossip that went the rounds then, Robert W. Tomlin, without doubt one of the finest disciplinarians that ever kept in leash a crowd of unruly schoolboys, a very superior man in every respect who married Nina Taylor in Norfolk and rose to high distinction as a leading lawyer in that city; Charles Edward Bishop, who on weekdays taught Latin and Greek in McGuire's School and on Sundays played the organ in Grace Street Presbyterian Church (where Dr. Drew had succeeded the venerable Dr. Read as pastor) and who was afterwards a professor in the College of William and Mary; and, last but not least, Willis H. Bocock, an erudite scholar even then when he was fresh from the University of Virginia, who now (if I am not mistaken) rests on his laurels as professor emeritus of Greek in the University of Georgia. There were others besides, for example, Mr. Puryear, Mr. Wauchope, "old man English," Professor Pettus, Professor L. N. Hasseleff (who taught French, perhaps German also), and a Mr. Little; but having less contact with them, I do not recall them nearly so vividly as the others named above.

As luck would have it, my desk in school was directly behind John Chaffin's. Different as could be in tastes and pursuits, he and I were sworn friends and allies, hand and glove with each other. However, his seat in front of mine as well as his great physique put me at a certain disadvantage, chiefly when without the slightest provocation or warning he would suddenly let go with his right arm and slap me violently on the cheek behind his back. If a firecracker had exploded, the noise of the impact could not have been louder; yet I almost doubted myself what had befallen me, for John himself looked round to see what had happened with as much astonishment as everybody else in the room, and even I was forced to pretend that I knew no more than the indignant teacher who from his seat on the platform scanned every countenance. It was a blow entirely without

animosity, nay rather a token of affection, certainly not to be resented. Nobody present save the perpetrator and the victim knew for certain the origin of this periodic disturbance. It was a flagrant breach of decorum, as the teacher in charge of the room at the time always gave us to understand. Where were his eyes, I used to wonder, if he never could see the print of John Chaffin's fingers as plainly marked on my face as if the imprint had been taken by a criminologist on a sheet of waxed paper?

I daresay no boy ever lived on earth who so thoroughly enjoyed going to school as my friend John Chaffin who was "kept in" regularly every day, and certainly no schoolboy ever had a more sovereign disdain for everything that was to be learned from books. Somehow he got the notion that Themistocles was one of my special heroes, and just to show his total lack of respect for that worthy, and above all to tease me, he delighted in calling him Themi-stockles as if his name rhymed with "cockles," and like a simpleton I took pains to correct his pronunciation and sought to rouse his interest in the struggles between Athens and Sparta. The inside of my desk was filled with textbooks neatly arranged in order with several compartments reserved for writing pads, pens, and pencils, etc., and a place in one corner for the "snack" I used to take to school to cat at recess. On the contrary, the interior of John Chaffin's desk was like a miniature museum and contained a rare collection of curios, odds and ends of every variety, not only inanimate junk, jackknives, fishhooks, nails, string, indeed nearly everything you could possibly think of, but living animals as well, birds, snails, lizards, and any creeping creature that John happened to find on his way to school that day, for everything that lived and breathed excited both his sympathy and curiosity. Indeed his tastes were manifold, and his genius and activities were equal to his propensities. Of his pranks and punishments I could tell many stories, having sometimes been implicated in them, bur at present one must suffice as more or less typical of all the others.

On the particular day when this episode occurred, a written

examination was being held in our schoolroom, and for the time being all the usual recitations were suspended. An examination was a dignified and solemn occasion, and dead silence prevailed, so intent was everybody on his task. The teacher in charge of the room was Mr. Bocock, who, seated high on the platform in a comfortable chair, was whiling away the time as best he could by reading a new novel which was just off the press and in which I must say he seemed to be deeply engrossed. In the midst of the stillness John Chaffin reached in his desk and took out a Jew's harp, or maybe it was a homemade fiddle, and rising suddenly to his feet called out in clarion tones, "Act I, Scene I." Instantly all eyes were turned towards him as he proceeded forthwith to play a mournful ditty, yet without visible sign of emotion on his face. The teacher on the platform, just as imperturbable, seemed scarcely to take his eyes from the book before him, and sat perfectly still until the first stanza was concluded and John was about to announce the beginning of the next scene. Before John could utter the words, Mr. Bocock, without taking his eyes from the book, said a little wearily but perfectly distinctly, "Chaffin, step to the board! " Putting down his harp on the top of his desk, John marched obediently to the platform and took his stand in front of the blackboard. Then Mr. Bocock rose from his chair and handing John the book he had been reading, said, "Write on the board the preface of that book in Latin!" and for the first time a faint smile hovered on his lips. I found out afterwards that the book was Mr. Virginius Dabney's Don Miff which had its title from a child's pronunciation of the name John Smith. With the book in one hand and an unbroken stick of chalk in the other hand, my undismayed friend turned his broad face for an instant towards the blackboard and then gazed at me, with a curious smirk on his countenance. At that moment my admiration was unbounded, I leaped to my feet, and lifting the Greek lexicon high above my head, I let it fall to the floor, upsetting in its descent an inkstand on Henry Valentine's desk across the aisle. The impact of the huge dictionary sounded throughout the room like the Day of Judgment, and for a moment or two it looked as if Bedlam was about to be let loose. Retribution was instant, and in less than a minute afterwards I was standing in front of the blackboard on the opposite wall having been given the laconic commission to "turn Chaffin's Latin into Greek." There we stood, the two of us, all the rest of that livelong day, enduring our punishment as best we could, looking sheepish enough; and for all practical purposes idle as painted ships on a painted ocean, for John did not even attempt to make a beginning of his task, and nay performance had perforce to wait on his accomplishment. I cannot recall how we were released at last, but I know that ever afterwards John Chaffin and I agreed that Mr. Bocock was a foeman worthy of our steel.

When school let out at three o'clock, Mr. McGuire took his stand on one side of the open folding doors between the two big schoolrooms where his voice could be heard by all concerned, even though he himself was not visible from one of the communicating rooms off to one side; then, with a certain solemnity, he read out the names of the boys that were to be "kept in" that afternoon, either to learn their lessons better or to "write columns" in punishment of misconduct. In that establishment "column" was a solid phalanx of figures consisting of seven horizontal rows of seven digits each which was not finished and complete until the sum total of the column was accurately computed by addition and written below it. When the number of columns imposed on the culprit amounted to as many as a hundred or more (as was often the case for severe offenses), it was no light task for the teacher to audit the account, and I doubt whether he ever really did so except in a more or less perfunctory way. John Chaffin hardly took the trouble to listen to hear his name called on Mr. McGuire's list of delinquents, for he knew beforehand it was written somewhere on that fatal sheet of paper; so, the moment Mr. McGuire rang his little bell, John set to work promptly, his face all smeared with ink but without

a trace of worry on it, and began at once to do his columns. Even so, I know he is in arrears to this day, for his debt was piled so high that it would have taken a lifetime to discharge it.

The schoolmate I loved best of all was Mr. McGuire's nephew and namesake, John Peyton McGuire, of Berryville in Clarke County, who lived in the principal's home as long as he was a pupil in the school. David and Jonathan were not more devoted than he and I were to each other, not only in the years when we were both in school together but afterwards when I left him and went to Richmond College. My comrade was perhaps two years older and much more mature than I was, but while he was a born leader, he never asserted his superiority, although I gladly admitted it. Handsome and manly, upright and chivalrous, gay and debonair, to me he was like Sir Galahad without a peer. He was a favourite with boys and girls alike. Often in the evening John McGuire used to walk home with me, and Father and Mother would prevail on him to spend the night, a welcome guest under our roof. However, he suffered from one infirmity which annoyed and even persecuted him all the days of his life; yet instead of detracting from his charm, I believe it really enhanced it. It was not just an impediment of speech but a most aggravated form of stuttering, absolutely beyond control. While I know it was a sore affliction and he did his best to overcome it, this handicap never cramped his style either in society or in his ordinary occupations. Nobody could laugh, more heartily than he did himself at his sheer inability to pronounce the word he tried in vain to utter;. yet now and then he used to lose his temper when he suspected somebody of having fun at his expense.

The last year I was in Richmond College (1887-88) John McGuire and I used to sally forth together in the evening to pay visits to some young lady or other in our set who happened to take our fancy, for by this time we were two very susceptible young men and loved danger for its own sake, not knowing the risks we ran.

One particular adventure of this kind I happen to recall partly

because we took so much pains to put on our best apparel for the occasion (which I am afraid was not very good at that), but chiefly on account of the disappointment we had that evening. We were planning to call for the first time on a fashionable miss who dwelt in an elegant mansion on West Franklin Street, a lady indeed who was outside the sphere of our operations and quite out of our reach. Never before had either of us ventured in such high society, and I think both of us were a little uncomfortable as we stood on the marble steps in front of her door and rang the bell. Instantly a butler in livery answered the summons, and nothing daunted, John McGuire essayed to tell him our names. Alas! try as he would, he simply could not utter a name like mine that began with the letter S. The ebon countenance of the butler could not hide a smile; whereupon, John's wrath suddenly flared up and was so ungovernable that he smote the poor fellow with his fist and metamorphosed the smile on his face completely. It was not a very hard blow, but it was enough. I was taken so much by surprise that I hardly knew what had happened until John and I descended the marble steps arm in arm, and were back on the pavement. So we never had a glimpse of the wondrous girl we set out to visit that evening in all our fine raiment.

I believe that was the last expedition John McGuire and I ever made together. He was nearly a grown man then, and at the end of the session he returned to his home in Berryville and planned to go to work to earn his living, as so many talented youths were obliged to do early in life in those hard times in the South; and not long afterwards I left Richmond also and went to the University of Virginia. So we parted ne'er to meet again! We continued to write to each other from time to time, and we swore eternal friendship, but our paths diverged. Then one day — it was the middle of June, 1880 — tragic tidings came! Seeking to save the life of a companion, John Peyton McGuire was drowned in New River at a place called Hawk's Nest. No lapse of time has ever erased the memory of that first great sorrow of my life.

My first home in Richmond when I was a very little boy and had Malvina for my nurse was in a small house on West Main Street, number 105, next door to the Wortharn's who lived in the big house on the corner at Foushee Street, and directly opposite the back yard of Colonel Archer Anderson's residence. I daresay I was about seven or eight years old when we moved to 616 East Franklin Street and lived in a house that was left standing there until it was torn down about 1940. It was separated by an alley from the high brick wall that enclosed the spacious grounds of the old Archer mansion which fronted on Sixth Street. As you descended the hill from that northeast corner, about the middle of the block just before you got to our house, you barely had room enough to squeeze between the Archer's brick wall and the trunk of the huge sycamore tree which rose out of the pavement and occupied nearly the whole width of the sidewalk, certainly one of the noblest trees I ever saw in my life. I know for certain that we were still living in that house when I was a pupil in Miss Sully's School and when we got back from Europe in 1881, but I cannot recall distinctly the year when we moved to 1003 East Marshall Street, where we lived ever afterwards until the family went to Norfolk to live about 1890, just before I returned to Richmond from the University of Virginia and taught for one session in McGuire's School. The Marshall Street house, which was owned by my father, is still standing amid the ruins of many old homes that were fine residences a long time ago, though even in the 1880's all that neighbourhood was on the downgrade and beginning to be deserted by the old patrician families that had flourished there for many generations from the foundation of the city. Diagonally across the street from our house was the elegant home of Major Legh R. Page at the northwest corner of Marshall and Tenth streets. One of my chief delights in those days was to get a glimpse, if possible, of his beautiful daughter Mary Legh Page, who was then in the flower of her youth and a truly heavenly sight to see. Once, but once only, I had the good fortune to behold her and May Handy together in our house at

the same time; it was like the conjunction of two stars of the first magnitude so evenly matched in pure loveliness that mortal eye could not discern wherein either excelled the other. Then I was just a lad not more than about fifteen years old, yet old enough to have read Edgar Allan Poe's lines To Helen and even to have learned some of them by heart, for I know that when I gazed at Mary Legh Page, who never knew me from Adam, I used to murmur ecstatically, although I was not sure exactly what the poet had in mind and had sonic doubt as to whether the verse fitted my particular case.

My last year in McGuire's School was the session of 1885-86, when I won the orator's medal and had also the honour of being awarded a diploma with a purple ribbon. My friend Walter Fauntleroy Taylor, destined to become a famous Wall Street lawyer in New York, received the "purple ribbon" at the same time, nor did anybody more richly deserve it, for he was a gentleman and a scholar all the days of his life.

The next two years (1886-88) I was enrolled as a day scholar in Richmond College where I devoted myself exclusively to the study of Latin, Greek, and Mathematics. That institution was located then at the extreme end of Grace Street, about four or five blocks west of Monroe Park, and, I suppose, was just inside the city limits. It was a walk of considerably more than a mile from my house to the gate of the college grounds which I took thither and back every day in good and bad weather alike. Not long ago I happened to meet a dear old lady in New York who giggled when she heard my name and said, "Is it possible you are the boy I used to see going past my old home in Richmond when I was a little girl? You were on your way to school and

always wore tight breeches and oh, such a high collar!" I could not help wincing a little at the picture she recalled; yet I had to acknowledge that her identification was beyond dispute. Who can ever really wish to see himself as others see him?.

The teachers I had at Richmond College were undoubtedly three very highly qualified and unusual men each in his own way, and each of them has left an indelible impression on me. Herbert H. Harris, professor of Greek and Chairman of the Faculty, inspired me with a profound respect for his learning and character both. From Edmund Harrison, who had the chair of Latin, I obtained a clear and just insight into the great literature of ancient Rome which has proved invaluable to me ever since. I can never be too grateful to him for all he did for me in those days. Professor Harrison's nickname on the campus was "Cum," which I believe was a contraction from cum occasionale, a construction for which he was supposed to have a certain partiality and fondness but which I cannot now identify unless it was another name for Dr. Gildersleeve's circumstantial cum. To me, Edward Smith, professor of Mathematics, who was a younger brother of Professor Francis H. Smith of the University of Virginia, seemed to be a veritable wizard and genius whose intellectual processes were as strange and unaccountable as they were quick and infallible. Certainly his mind was one of the keenest and most active I ever happened to encounter. Puryear in Chemistry, Winston in Physics, Thomas in Philosophy, and Pollard in English were some of the other teachers in Richmond College in my day, but I knew them only by sight and was not a pupil of any one of them.

Perhaps I can boast that in Latin and Greek I shone with a little lustre, but in Analytic Geometry I certainly trailed near the foot of the class. At the end of my first session in Richmond College, I learned with a rude shock, yet not wholly unexpected, that I had failed to "pass" in Mathematics. Ashamed and crestfallen, I knew that I had only myself to blame. Edward Smith was a just man who never showed favour where it was not

deserved, nor was he one to suffer fools gladly. I think he never had a very good opinion of my talents or ability, and I do not remember his ever taking any particular interest in me one way or the other; yet it was Edward Smith who first inspired in me a genuine love of Mathematics.

Professor Edmund Harrison was warmhearted and generous, and he went out of his way to be kind to me. Under his guidance I suppose I must have read during those two years upwards of a thousands pages of the best Latin authors in both prose and poetry. That great philosophical poem of Lucretius, De rerum natura, was certainly over my head, as hard to comprehend as it was difficult to translate; yet I tried that hurdle also and even fancied I got an inkling of what it was all about. While I did not know then that Lucretius was greater as a poet than he was as a philosopher, I was sometimes carried off my feet by the lofty flights of his imagination, and the long time I spent on this didactic poem was certainly not wasted.

At the same time, under the expert guidance of Professor Harris, I was reading Xenophon, Herodotus, and Thucydides in Greek and perhaps also the orations of Lysias and Demosthenes. Professor Harris was precise and methodical in his way of teaching, and if we went at a slower pace in Greek than we were wont to go in Latin, it was perhaps with all the firmer tread for not being so swift.

In the way of sound and useful education, no discipline, it seems to me, was better calculated to yield fruitful results for such pupils as were susceptible to its influence. Ignorant and inexperienced as I certainly was in many ways, by the time I finished my course in Richmond College, I had already acquired the art of learning and the habit of study which are the two keys of knowledge, that is, of the knowledge that is to be gained from books. Per aspera ad astra, that was my motto, even if I did not take it quite seriously. My own experience is personal, of course, and perhaps of little worth for others who are differently constituted, but never once since then, much as I have heard to the

contrary, has my faith faltered in the abiding value of literature as the corner stone and foundation of a useful and sensible education. I still believe, now perhaps more firmly than ever, and in spite of all the winds of doctrine that blow from all sides, that a serious course of six or seven years in school and at college spent chiefly in the study of Greek and Roman Classics, under the guidance of sympathetic and enlightened teachers, is likely to impart to an impressionable mind susceptible of receiving it, a poise and reasonableness and an enjoyment and tranquility that are quite unattainable by any other process of training. I pronounce this judgment with more confidence because I know that others far better qualified than I am have been led to substantially the same conclusion.

During all the years that I went to school in Richmond, my father had laid out a systematic programme and supervised himself my instruction in history and English literature. Accordingly, by the time I got to be seventeen years of age, I had had an extensive course of reading in these subjects. For example, besides Gillies Greece (which was a very formidable volume printed in two columns on a page) I had had a complete course in the history of England from the time of Alfred the Great to the end of the reign of King George III and had read all of Hume, Maculae, and Lord Macon and other works that were germane to the task. Nor was it enough for me simply to read these books, for my father examined me 'afterwards and from time to time required me to write compositions on subjects which I myself selected for the purpose. This part of the task was hardest of all, for I knew in advance that my father would be unsparing in his criticism, yet perfectly just withal.

My father had graduated from the University of Virginia with the degree of Master of Arts when he was eighteen years of age. After I had attended Richmond College for two years, he deemed that the time had come for me to go to the University of Virginia also.