University of Virginia Library

II
MATRICULATION
1888

It was in the consulship of William M. Thornton (1851-1935), who succeeded Colonel Charles S. Venable as Chairman of the Faculty, that I both began and ended my career as student and instructor in the University of Virginia. Then he himself was just a young professor of Applied Mathematics, but had he been Agamemnon, he could not have seemed to me more born to be feared and obeyed. In those simple days when Romans were like brothers, the modest office of the ruler of the campus was naught but an ordinary student's room adjoining the residence of Professor John R. Page in the pavilion at the north end of West Lawn. The session used to begin regularly on the first day of October, and I suppose it was on that very day in the year 1888 — to me it seems no longer ago than if it had been yesterday — that, accompanied by my father, I stood before the Chairman's door and found myself a moment later in Mr. Thornton's presence. He rose from his chair behind the table as we entered and coming forward greeted my fattier cordially. He extended his hand to me also and was affable and

polite; yet I was sensitive enough to notice that the nod he bestowed on me was not much more than just and thereafter I had little to say while he and my father carried on an animated conversation. Youthful and insignificant as I know I appeared to him that day, I take pride in adding that my first introduction to, Mr. Thornton was the beginning of a lifelong attachment and friendship that never faltered to the day of his lamented death in 1935. Thornton was indeed a man of great native ability and rare intellectual power, and the better I knew him, the greater he grew in stature. Such testimony is proof of a man's real worth, for often enough it is the other way round; the exalted personage who loomed so large in the eyes of the raw cadet is perhaps only too apt to shrink to quite ordinary proportions in the riper and more callous judgment of the same observer later on in life.

It took only a short time to transact the business in the Chairman's office. Mr. Thornton agreed with my father that for the present I had already gone far enough in Latin, but that another year could be devoted with advantage to concentrated study of Greek and Mathematics. Accordingly, it was decided without a dissenting voice that I was to take concurrently the intermediate and senior classes in each of these subjects, with a view to completing the requirements for graduation in both schools by the end of my first session, as indeed seemed reasonable enough in view of my previous preparation.

The next step was to see the Proctor and conclude the business of matriculation by paying the required fees and making arrangements for my board and lodging. The Proctor was Major Green Peyton whose home and office were in the pavilion in the middle of East Range, and after our interview with the Chairman, we repaired thither immediately. Major Peyton and my father were friends of long standing, his wife being indeed my father's first

cousin, and in his office I was not only at ease but, so to speak, at home. Much to my satisfaction, I soon learned from him that the Thompson Brown Scholarship, founded by my aunt Mrs. Charles S. Venable in memory of her first husband, was to be bestowed on me by her request as long as I continued to be a student in the University. This gift, which amounted to $90 a year in cash, was a windfall, and the first thought that passed through my mind on being told about it was that here was a possible means of defraying such little debts as livery-stable bills and various other obligations that are often quite annoying to an impecunious, young gentleman in college. During the two or three years previous to my matriculation, I had been wont to spend part of every summer in the gay and fashionable home of my cousins on Park Street in Charlottesville, and, consequently, among the boys and girls of that delightful community I had already many friends and boon companions and was a participant in their joys and sorrows and all their ways of life. For instance, I knew by experience that it cost exactly one dollar and a half at Payne's Livery Stable to hire a two-wheel dogcart with a nag hitched to it, and that the single afternoon on which I was the proud possessor of this outfit was just about long enough to take a pretty girl for my companion and go round the "nine-mile circuit," which was then a favourite drive, in time to bring her safe home again before it got dark, otherwise it would be scandalous. If on arriving at her door she invited me to stay and have supper (as could usually be expected), that was a two-fold joy directed towards heart and stomach alike, and my dollar and a half would certainly have been well spent! If such were the visions that were going through my head while Major Peyton and my father were engaged in making out my account, neither of them was aware of the vital concern I had in those figures; so the itemized budget of expenditures as finally adopted contained no provision whatever for Payne's Livery Stable bill. In consequence of this serious omission, it turned out afterwards that, being hard put to it, on more than one occasion I was reduced to the necessity of selling a bureau or some other more or less indispensable article of furniture in order to hire a horse and buggy and keep an important engagement with the damsel who at that particular moment happened to be all the world to me.

By nightfall of that first eventful day, I had received my father's last injunctions, and when he bade me farewell and took the train back to Richmond, I was already installed in my new lodgings at No. 14 Monroe Hill, doubtless not a little elated by a strange feeling of self-reliance, that "glorious privilege" every youth longs for "of being independent." The rent of the unfurnished room was only $30 for the entire session of nine months. How I got the furniture I have now only the dimmest recollection, except that, such as it was, it was all bought second-hand, plain enough when it was new and bruised subsequently by rough usage. The bed, somewhat wider than single, occupied one corner of the room and a pine bureau another corner, the two being separated by the intervening back window and an old trunk whose curved top ascended at its highest point not very far above the level of the window sill and which held inside nearly all my lares et penates and other earthly possessions. Later on I acquired in some way a low steamer trunk also, as it used to be called, which was conveniently, perhaps a little contemptuously, shoved out of sight under the bed. It generally contained apples and other raw materials collected for consumption between meals, especially late at night just before descending into the peaceful arms of Morpheus. The door of the room was directly opposite the window, and on the right-hand side next to the door was the closet closed in front by a calico curtain that had to be pulled to one side in order to see inside. Built into the room in a shallow recess on the side of the mantelpiece opposite the bureau, the closet served the double purpose of wardrobe and washstand. There were several hooks on one side for hanging towels and the suit of clothes which was not in use for the time

being, and on the other side was a set of several shelves for holding a motley collection of odds and ends including toilet articles, medicine, and perhaps also a bottle of wine or liquor if I was fortunate enough to have it. The washstand itself was simply a horizontal board extending from one side of the closet to the other about waist-high from the floor, with a round hole cut in the middle for gripping the washbasin and holding it tight in place. A pitcher of water usually rested inside the basin when the latter was not in actual use for any other purpose, and a pail stood on the floor underneath into which the water in the basin could be emptied. The outside top of the closet supported a pile of kindling wood stacked all the way up to the ceiling.

In the fourth corner of the room, on the other side of the door opposite the closet, a bookshelf was fastened tight against the north wall. The two upper shelves held all my textbooks and a few miscellaneous books of one kind and another, including the Oxford Bible my mother gave me when I left home, the Works of Shakespeare all in a single cheap volume, Lord Byron's Poems, Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad, a duodecimo edition of Don Quixote in two volumes, Dr. Smith's History of Greece, Hume's History of England (5 volumes), Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Smollett's Humphrey Clinker, Fielding's Tom Jones, Dickens's David Copperfield, Mrs. Humphrey Ward's Robert Elsmere, besides some other more or less standard works that I cannot positively recall. The truth is, during the whole time I was a student in the University of Virginia, I affected to be a young gentleman of catholic literary tastes, and I tried and contrived to produce that impression to a certain extent. As a matter of fact, the collection of authors above mentioned was, I suppose, largely accidental and happened to consist mainly of such volumes as I had been able to purloin from my father's library in Richmond before leaving home. The two lower shelves of the bookcase were reserved for such flotsam and jetsam as could find no other convenient place of repose — loose articles, a hat, an extra pair of shoes, a tennis racquet, etc.

One of the two or three chairs in the room was an old-fashioned wooden armchair with a writing board attached on one side that could be let down when not in use. Useful as this contrivance was for some purposes, on the whole it was not as convenient as a lapboard that could be held on the arms of a rocking chair, chiefly because the latter could accommodate several books at the same time and above all my big Greek lexicon. Lastly, a small round table in the centre of the room held my student's lamp in the days before we changed from kerosene oil to electricity for illumination.

Two indispensable articles of furniture had to be kept outdoors. One was a large wooden coal chest that held perhaps as much as half a ton of soft coal. This oblong box rested on the ground with one of the two narrow sides close against the outside wall below the window, the lid of the box, which could be lifted on a pair of hinges when the padlock was removed, being nearly flush with the window sill. The little grate beneath the mantelpiece was hardly big enough to hold more than two or three ordinary lumps of coal; yet small as the fire was in it, it sufficed to keep the room snug and comfortable even in the coldest weather. The initials and other insignia of all the previous denizens of my abode had been piously carved — more often than not burned by a red-hot poker — in the old woodwork around the fireplace.

The other utensil that had to be kept outdoors also for lack of space inside was my tin bath tub or "hat tub," as it was called from its shape being like that of a girl's large hat 'turned upside down. Somewhat precariously, perhaps a little ostentatiously also, this outward and visible symbol was suspended under the arcade against the brick wall on one side of my front door, and when the wind howled, it rocked back and forth on the rusty old nail and banged against the wall with a noise like stage thunder. Sometimes indeed the nail pulled loose from the mortar, and then there was a loud crash on the pavement below that roused all the inhabitants of Monroe Hill. On such occasions everybody rushed

out and lent a helping hand to rescue the battered tub and then to hang it back again if possible with a firmer hold.

One drawback about my new domicile, as I was soon to find out, was that it was not only in plain view of Mr. Thornton's imposing residence on the crest of Monroe Hill but within hailing distance also, for it is never quite safe for a subaltern to be under his master's watchful eye by day as well as exposed to his wakeful ear by night. As a matter of fact, the shorter arm of the L-shaped row of dormitories on Monroe Hill was joined to Mr. Thornton's house by a pair of communicating rooms that were used for his library and study. Archer Anderson and his younger brother Joe, old schoolmates of mine in Richmond who had both come to college two or three years before me, occupied the two rooms in the angle of the L; then on the long side towards Dawson's Row came first Billy Magill, then Joe Dunn, both from Petersburg and both from McCabe's School in that town; and, third, Julian Wells, of Charleston, South Carolina, whose room was adjacent to mine. On the other side Randolph Hicks, of The Plains in Fauquier County, was my next-door neighbour. Jim Stevens and his roommate Boyle, Boyle and Stevens as they were usually known because they were almost as inseparable as Siamese twins, lived in the last room at the end of the row. I believe they were both from Mississippi.

Among them all my best and dearest friend was Joe Dunn (the Reverend Dr. Joseph B. Dunn, '90, of Richmond, Virginia), who afterwards married my beautiful cousin Martha Southall, a famous belle in Charlottesville in those days. He and I had many congenial tastes and bonds of union. Yet even then his aims were higher than mine, and though now living in retirement in his home in Richmond, he was for many years a very distinguished clergyman in the Episcopal Church, widely known and much beloved in Virginia. Few persons that I have ever encountered had a greater flair for literature than Joe Dunn, and even in his boyhood he showed great talent for writing. He was much

addicted to poetry, both gay and sentimental, in his college days, and occasionally he used to venture to compose verses himself. One of his fighter pieces, if I remember correctly, began with the lines, but exactly what the sequel was, either I never knew or it never was decided. It was Joe Dunn too who taught me that in Limericks and perhaps even in narrative verse on the order of Byron's Don Juan, it was perfectly permissible in a tight place to force two words to rhyme with each other even in a case where they did not have exactly the same number of syllables, for example" "goat" and "poet" simply by transposing the latter into "pote." However, as my own muse was never very sprightly at best, Joe Dunn's instruction, useful as it might have been to a more gifted disciple, I am sorry to say was never turned to advantage by me.

My next-door neighbour, Julian Wells, was a perfect gentleman if one ever lived in this world, not exactly unsociable, yet somewhat shy and solitary. His aloofness might have passed unnoticed except for a curious way he had of reminding us of his presence in our midst. Without rhyme or reason and invariably without the slightest warning, suddenly in broad daylight Julian Wells would throw the door of his room wide-open and, standing there on the threshold with a loaded revolver in his hand, would discharge a volley of bullets in the plaster ceiling of the arcade just above his head, much to the consternation of all the peaceful and law-abiding inhabitants of Monroe Hill and Dawson's Row. At first we conjectured that our friend was perhaps celebrating the anniversary of some glorious and patriotic deed that had been done once upon a time in his native state, but the theory broke down unless there was a legal holiday in South Carolina nearly every month of the year. Wells's fusillade was of short duration, but it reverberated far and wide while it lasted. I never ceased from wondering why Mr. Thornton and his

family endured this periodic disturbance without ever seeming to notice it, or why Julian Wells, so far as I know, was never called to account for all the plastering that was blasted from the arcade ceiling and had to be swept off the pavement next day by the patient janitor.

Boyle and Stevens were two amateur musicians as wedded to their art as they were devoted to each other, Banjo or guitar, mandolin or zither, never for a moment day or night, so at least it seemed to me, were not both of them plucking one instrument or the other as if they were alone together in the wide, wide world and it mattered not how long the performance lasted. I myself am not a judge of music in all its varieties, and all I can say with certainty is that in this particular instance

but for good or evil anybody who lived on Monroe Hill in the session of 1888-89 simply had to get used to it, for there was no escape short of murder or suicide. Boyle and Stevens flourished before the radio was invented and long before Bing Crosby and all his tribe began to "croon" in every Christian home in the land. Perhaps if I could hear their simple melody once more, it might seem virile and even grateful by comparison with certain modern music to which I am more or less forced to listen. Bill Nye once said sagely enough that Wagner was better than it sounds!

Randolph Flicks, who got to be an eminent lawyer in New York, was a fellow of infinite jest besides being a great lady's' man and society leader. He was handsome withal and immaculately dressed always. If he lacked a new shirt or was at a loss for the proper necktie to wear on some particular occasion, he had no scruples about invading the room of his next-door neighbour and selecting the most suitable article of apparel he could find in his wardrobe. If afterwards I happened to meet Randolph Hicks that same evening in one of the fashionable drawing rooms

downtown in Charlottesville where we were both frequent visitors,. little by little it would begin to dawn on me that my elegant friend was almost ostentatiously or at any rate barefacedly arrayed in one or more of my own precious garments. My astonishment at this discovery afforded him the greatest possible amusement and put him in rare good humour all the rest of the evening.

Late one Sunday morning I woke up and remembered with joy that I had an engagement to go to church with lovely Maggie Mason. To sit by her side in the family pew in old Christ Church in Charlottesville, then to escort her home (which was quite a long stroll), and almost certainly to be invited to stay to dinner surely that was as blissful a prospect as any youth on earth could have that heavenly day in early autumn! I opened my eyes and yawned. There in front of me a cheerful fire glowed on the hearth, and a jet of steam issued from the spout of the iron kettle on the bracket of the grate. Andrew Jackson, the coloured janitor who waited on me had his faults, but he had his virtues also. Evidently, a little while before, he had tiptoed in my room as usual, and lighted the fire without disturbing me; evidently too he had remembered that it was Sunday and it was my bounden duty to take a bath before breakfast. Now all was in readiness for that hebdomadal act of ablution. The tub had been brought indoors and placed in front of the fire. A pail of cold water was on the rug beside it, to be used to temper the hot water in the kettle. A towel and a cake of soap were laid on the seat of the hat tub, and another towel was spread on the floor for me to step on when I got out of the bath. I glanced at the watch under my pillow — Goodness gracious! it was already after half-past nine o'clock, and I had to bathe, dress, get breakfast, and be downtown at the church door, more than a mile away, by eleven o'clock sharp. Mrs. Burthe's boardinghouse where I took my meals was at the end of West Range not much farther than a hundred yards from my door. The breakfast-hour on Sunday was always later than usual, but the door of the dining room was

locked punctually at 9:45 A. M. I was aware there was not a moment to spare, and quick as a flash I leaped out of bed and began to pull on my trousers, intending to get a bite of breakfast first and then return and take the bath afterwards. The first part of the plan succeeded reasonably well; I got a piece of toast and a cup of lukewarm coffee, but when I reached my room again all out of breath and entered the door, the sight that met my eyes, doubtless more lewd than ludicrous, was the naked form of Randolph Hicks placidly ensconced in my tub, his body smeared over down to the waist in a thick lather of soapsuds. The floor all round was splashed with water as if a live porpoise had been let loose in the room. Hicks was certainly in as high spirits at that moment as any animal could be, and he called out to me to come in without minding him. My indignation was no match for his glee, and I had to make the best of it. Of course, I missed my bath that day, but I kept my tryst with Maggie Mason. If seeing me in my best attire, she ever suspected I was not immaculate through and through, she was far too innocent and well-bred to intimate that I was naught but a whited sepulchre, pure without and foul within. Nevertheless, the story got all over town of how Randolph Hicks stole my bath, for he told it himself with great gusto everywhere he went.

When I first came to the University, the two great rival fraternities were the DKE's and the ATO's, and so far as college politics was concerned, nor much love was lost between these powerful cliques. The high quality of the personnel of the ATO's was measured by such typical representatives as Archer Anderson and Reid Hobson, but in order to match them it was enough for the DKE's to point to their own Hampden Bagby and Raleigh Minor, who certainly ranked as high in those days as any pair of students in college. A few months previously, namely, in June, 1888, the hard-earned and much-coveted degree of Master of Arts had been conferred on each of perhaps as notable a group of candidates as had ever been presented for

graduation up to that time, and three members of that small group had been Archer Anderson, Hampden Bagby, and Raleigh Minor. In the session of 1888-89 Anderson and Minor were both back in college as first-year Law students; but Bagby went to Nashville, Tennessee, where he taught two years (1888-90) in Mr. Clarence Wallace's celebrated academy.

Two large round tables were reserved in Mrs. Burthe's dining room on West Range, one for the ATO's and the other for the DKE's, and that was about. the closest those two organizations ever got together. At 'least a year before I came to college, I had been pledged to join the DKE's, and now at last that boyhood ambition had been realized; I myself was one of the élite as I fondly imagined. The other members of Eta Chapter of DKE in 1888-89, as well as I can recall, were: Charles Baskerville, William Cameron, W. Robertson Gordon, Robert Tate Irvine, E. 0. McCabe, Joseph McElroy, Robert French Mason, F. A. Meacham, Raleigh Colston Minor, Sidney M. Neely, Jefferson Davis Norris, Allen Potts, Francis P. Salas, Muir Weissinger, Joseph P. Winston, Thomas Longstreet Wood, and Elisha E. Wright.

One of the most popular and conspicuous Eli Banana's in college before my time was Beverly Randolph Harrison, eldest son of Mrs. Julian Harrison and at least four or five years older than his half-brother Peyton Harrison, who was, about my own age. He used to return to the University fairly regularly two or three times every session for several years after he graduated, if indeed "Bev," as everybody called him, ever did graduate; the main if not the only object of his periodic visits being to attend the Eli initiations, which were celebrated with much revelry. Being also an ardent DKE, "Bev" kept in touch with the affairs of the local chapter and was a kind of patron of the new members from year to year. So it came to pass that one day early in the autumn of 18 88, without appointment or previous advertisement and much to my bewilderment, "Bev" Harrison appeared at my door on Monroe Hill attended by two coloured porters each

bearing a big wooden tub on top of his head, which "Bev" directed them to deposit inside my room. One tub contained bottles of liquor, beer, wine, etc., together with a pile of glasses and mugs, and the other was simply filled with large lumps of ice. The ceremony was short and simple. "Bev" greeted me cordially, even affectionately, and then announced that he had come to spend several days and was planning to entertain a number of friends and boon companions who might be expected to arrive almost any minute. He regretted that he had not had time to notify me in advance, and he certainly hoped he was not inconveniencing me. I was really too flattered and too flabbergasted to make remonstrance. One thing was plain, and that was that I myself was de trop; so I hastily gathered together an armful of garments and certain books such as I supposed I should be likely to need during my absence, and leaving "Bev" Harrison and the porters in charge of the premises, I repaired to House E and got Joe Winston to let me share his lodgings and bed for the next two or three days. Not long afterwards, pandemonium broke loose on Monroe Hill and a din that exceeded "the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of musick" such as, according to the Book of Daniel, used to be heard in Babylon. The riotous celebration continued day and night for more than forty-eight hours; then suddenly one evening "Bev" Harrison and all his tribe vanished as completely as if they had been hauled to jail in a police wagon, and the two tubs full of empty bottles and glasses were all that was left in my room. It took Andrew Jackson the good part of a day to clear away the débise and make the place habitable and respectable once more, but it took him a whole week to cease grumbling over all the extra work he had been obliged to do.

The orgy did not escape official notice. That same evening when quiet was restored, a note was delivered to me from the Chairman of the Faculty, and I opened it with trepidation. It was couched in polite terms; yet there was an ominous tone in it. It asked me to report to the Chairman's office at nine o'clock

the next morning. I was there punctually at the appointed hour, but Mr. Thornton was occupied and kept me waiting at least thirty minutes, on purpose, it seemed to me, to aggravate the suspense. There was a note of sarcasm in his voice when at last he turned to me and asked if I supposed he was ignorant of the flagrant disorder that had occurred in my room. In vain I protested my innocence without implicating anybody else. Mr. Thornton dismissed me coldly, merely saying that I was on probation for the rest of the "session and warning me to go and sin no more. I left his office smarting under a sense of injustice, yet a little proud to think that I had borne myself with becoming dignity. Years afterwards when I sought to remind Mr. Thornton of this episode, he always professed not to have the faintest recollection of it. Yet as long as I remained in the University was conscious of having incurred his displeasure and fancied that I was under a perpetual cloud.

Simplicity is the handmaid of sincerity. Now as I look backward over an interval of more than half a century, simplicity and sincerity seem to me to have been the cardinal and distinguishing characteristics of the University of Virginia in my student days. It set great store on its high standards of honour and scholarship; above all its aim was. not so much size and quantity is it was strength and quality. Whether in any single year of my residence the number of students ever got as high as five hundred, I cannot say, but I believe it is safe to say that in 1888 the entire faculty did not much exceed a score of professors, without counting three or four assistants who were called instructors. What counted most was the personnel of teachers and pupils alike. The former were as a rule men of high character and refinement, while the latter came almost exclusively from the upper classes in the South between Maryland and Texas, with just enough matriculates from north of Mason and Dixon's line to leaven the lump and add to its flavour. In this congenial community mutual reserve and mutual respect ripened easily and

naturally into strong and enduring friendships not only are among the students themselves but often also between pupil and teacher. There was never any lack of hospitality, and there was little in the way of ceremony or social restraint. A student had as a rule free access to the home of nearly every professor and was cordially received and entertained there by all the members of the household, both old and young

In 1888 a remnant was still left of the illustrious faculty that had tided the University through the difficult and anxious years of the Civil War. John B. Minor (1813-1895), great expounder of the Common Law, and Francis Henry Smith (1829-1928), worthy successor of William B. Rogers ( 1804-1882) in the chair of Natural Philosophy, were indeed active and vigourous yet as in (lays of yore; but the venerable and beloved Dr. James Lawrence Cabell (1813-1889), professor of Physiology and Surgery, who as Chairman of the Faculty in the far-off days before the War with Mexico had conferred the degree of Master of Arts on my father, ended his useful and honourable life during my first session in the University. Dr. Maximilian Schele de Vere (d. 1898), professor of Modern Languages, who I believe was a native of Sweden, and Dr. George Frederick Holmes (1820-1897), professor of History, who was born in British Guiana, certainly two of the most erudite and renowned scholars in all the land, were both on the verge of retirement. Indeed ere my college days were over, William Howard Perkinson (1861-1898) had succeeded "Mr. Schele," and, similarly, Richard Heath Dabney, now the sole survivor of the faculty as it was in 1889, was even then all but nominally head of the School of History.

At least three members of that old faculty were outstanding not simply on account of their learning and technical fitness but above all because each of them had been a gallant and distinguished officer in the Civil War. Colonel Charles Scott Venable (1827-1900), professor of Mathematics, of whom, according to Mr. Thornton, it was not too much to say that he was

the second founder of the University of Virginia, had been General Lee's trusted aide-de-camp on the battle-field and in the bivouac. Colonel William Elisha Peters (1829-1906), professor of Latin, whom many of us found it hard to forgive for his printed Syllabus and mimeographed Case Notes, certainly two of the queerest, if also two of the most learned,. volumes on Latin syntax that were ever penned, had been colonel of a cavalry regiment in General Early's brigade. Lastly, John William Mallet (1832-1912),professor of Chemistry, a native of Dublin, Ireland, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, had not only seen active service in the field as a young artillery officer but had been a tower of strength to the Confederate Government as a scientific expert in the manufacture of gunpowder. We could never see these great teachers or speak of them without whole-hearted admiration and affection; yet many of us used to wonder what joy "old Ven" could possibly find, after all his adventures on the field of Mars, in the dark mazes of the calculus or in the curious convolutions of a hyperbolic paraboloid; what extraordinary virtue there was in the ablative absolute to kindle "old Pete's" enthusiasm afresh every time it turned up in Livy; or how on earth "Jack Mallet" could remain so cold and imperturbable when every experiment he demonstrated to his class infallibly took place just as he had predicted. Such perplexities were not for us to fathom, and their only effect was to exalt these beloved teachers in our eyes and, if possible; cement more firmly our allegiance to them. It was during Colonel Venable's term as Chairman of the Faculty and largely due to his efforts that the big Leander McCormick Telescope was constructed and erected on Observatory Mountain under the supervision and direction of Ormond Stone, first professor of Astronomy in the University of Virginia. Unless I am mistaken, it was Colonel Venable too who was quick to discern Mr. Thornton's extraordinary ability and brought him to the University as the first professor of Applied Mathematics, thereby paving the way for the foundation of the School of Engineering which afterwards under Dean Thornton was an important and flourishing new province of the enlarged university.

Another notable figure in those days. and for many years to come was Noah Knowles Davis (1830-1910), professor of Moral Philosophy, whose residence on West Lawn was directly opposite Colonel Venable's in the pavilion which is now the home of the Colonnade Club, the oldest structure in the University. "Noah K.," as he was familiarly known far and wide, was always bowed in thought and certainly looked the part of a philosopher, as he paced to and fro under the arcade in front of his door with his hands clasped behind his back and his body bent nearly double. Seeing him thus, I used to wonder whether he had failed to win

for if so, it certainly was not from lack of cogitation; yet it was plain to see that the even tenour of his contemplations was beset and disturbed by an inward torment. What was the nature of his affliction I never knew, but the violent grunts and groans to which Mr. Davis gave loud vent ever and anon were like the mutterings of a lost soul or of an unhappy mortal contending with a stubborn and irreconcilable foe lurking deep down possibly in the vicinity of the stomach. The first time I ever passed "Noah K." on the lawn and heard the strange growl he emitted, I was afraid some frenzy distemper had got in his head, but afterwards I got used to it and suspected that his plight was just such as would happen to any man who was addicted to metaphysics. Yet Plato himself could not have been held in higher esteem by his colleagues and disciples.

The humorous and satirical poem called "Modern Olympus," written by my friend Herbert Barry of New York, was published originally in the University Magazine in 1887. There, if anywhere, is to be found a contemporary, not altogether flattering

picture of the faculty as it was when the author was a student. Certainly this Homeric narrative is one of the gems of Tom Wood's anthology published in 1890 under the title ofArcade Echoes. "Bright Phoebus with the fiery hair" was none other than Francis Perry Dunnington (1851-1944), professor of Applied Chemistry. In those days his countenance was as ruddy as his hair; yet it was in the laboratory that Mr. Dunnington shone to best advantage. It was he who taught me how to bend a glass tube without deforming its bore, only, I never could learn to blow a perfect bubble on the end of the tube, as "Dunny" himself could do with as much case as "the man on the flying trapeze."

Other "immortals" who were celebrated in the classic poem above mentioned were "majestic Jove" himself, who of course represented Colonel Venable in his rôle of Chairman of the Faculty; "Mercury who rides upon the wind," obviously meant for James Mercer Garnett (1840-1916), professor of English; "Pallas who reigns over abstruse thought" alias "Noah K."; "Venus more than mortal fair," rather a mean fling at "old Daddy Holmes"; "the amorous Bacchus," a double entendre intended for Mr. Minor, who, 'tis true, was somewhat addicted to matrimony, yet held Bacchus in abhorrence; and "the graceful god from down below," meaning William Morris Fontaine (1835-1913), professor of Geology. The poem relates that Jove had summoned the gods to "the dread tribunal of the Olympic Hall" (in other words, Colonel Venable had called a faculty meeting) in order to ask their advice about a question as solemn as it was momentous, too hard for Jove to answer by himself. When the deities are all assembled, they are told that the disciples who "before our altars burn the midnight oil" (namely, Herbert Barry et id omne genus) had suddenly got out of hand and were restive, eager indeed for excitement or what might be called recreation. In a word, they craved leave to

and to have a dance, a ball, "a German," or whatever it was called, with honest-to-goodness girls as waltz partners. Now many good folks in those days believed that round dancing was, or should have been, in the category of the Seven Deadly Sins. No wonder the Olympic tribunal was stunned, and no wonder one deity after another rose to protest against the audacious proposal! I am sorry to say that, according to the veracious bard, it was decided, after much debate and due deliberation, not to grant the prayer of the humble disciples; for in those days the New Deal had not been heard of, and the wretched proletariat of the 1880's were lucky to be given a hearing at all and almost incredibly lucky if their petition got a favourable answer.

We used to call Mr. Garnett "dismal Jimmy" in allusion to his lugubrious countenance, though it really belied him, for he was a kind and affable gentleman and undoubtedly a foremost authority on "Beowulf" and Anglo-Saxon literature in general.

Mr. Fontaine likewise was far-renowned as a geologist. A confirmed old bachelor and very much of a recluse, he held forth somewhere in the bowels of the Lewis Brooks Museum. I cannot recall ever having laid eyes on him; nor can I call to mind the name of any student who had a class under him.

James H. Gilmore, who succeeded Stephen Osborne Southall (1816-1884) as professor of Constitutional and International Law, was Mr. Minor's colleague. I have only a dim recollection of him; yet I know he lived downtown in my grandfather's old home, where General Lee's monument now stands.

In 1888, Milton Wylie Humphreys (1844-1928), a native Virginian who had risen to distinction in the University of Texas, took Professor Wheeler's place in the chair of Greek. He was reputed to be a man of omnivourous learning, who like Lord Bacon had taken all knowledge for his realm; indeed, his greatest admirers boasted, not without exaggeration, that he would have been just as much at home in the chair of Mathematics as he was in that of Greek. Be that as it may, I can vouch for the fact that every week for many years in succession his name (or rather his

initials "M.W.H.") led all the rest in the published list of solvers of the current chess problem that was wont to appear regularly in every issue of Funk & Wagnalls's old Literary Digest. Yet, strange to say, although Mr. Humphreys would stand on his feet sometimes for an hour on a stretch watching the progress of a game of chess that was being played in the back of Olivier's bookshop, when he himself took the place of one of the contestants, he was as likely as not to suffer defeat. He seldom sat down as an actual player, for I suppose he must have known that Jim Cannon could lick him in short order, and indeed Jim Cannon was a formidable antagonist and used to checkmate me in about a score of moves.

When the elder Dr. John Staige Davis (1824-1885) died in 1885, his place as professor of Anatomy and Materia Medica had been taken by Dr. William B. Towles (1847-1893), a man of imposing stature and so striking in appearance that he had only to be seen to be admired and respected. Other eminent teachers in the Medical School were William Cecil Dabney (1849-1894), professor of Obstetrics and the Practice of Medicine; Albert Henry Tuttle (b. 1844), professor of Biology; and Paul Brandon Barringer (1857-1941), destined to be the last Chairman of the Faculty in succession to Mr. Thornton before the advent of Dr. Alderman as the first President of the University of Virginia.

Dr. Tuttle quickly won a high place for himself not only among his colleagues but in the whole community. Years afterwards he and I got to know each other by virtue of our having a common interest in the theory and construction of the compound microscope, for Tuttle was exceedingly expert and ingenious in the manifold uses of that beautiful instrument.

The care of the health of the student body was confided to Dr,. Dabney and Dr. Barringer. It must have been an onerous task in addition to their other duties and responsibilities, and was discharged by either the one or the other in regular alternation over a period of several months at a time. Many doses of calomel or some other drastic concoction that was in vogue in those days

were prescribed for me from time to time by whichever of the two happened to be the physician in charge when I applied to him for a quick. and sovereign remedy for a minor ailment. Dr. Barringer lived at the south end of East Range next to the old gymnasium, and one day I went there to his office complaining of annoying headache that attacked me every time I opened a book. Dr. Barringer looked me over for a minute or two, and then asked if I had ever suffered from eyestrain. Such an idea had never crossed my mind, but nevertheless he insisted on putting me through a sight-test. He rummaged through a pile of papers and pamphlets on a table in the middle of the room and unearthed a faded old Snellen test-chart, which he pinned on the wall with a thumbtack. It took only a few minutes longer for him to make up his mind positively that the headache of which I complained was undoubtedly due to a mild form of astigmatism in both eyes. Thereupon he wrote a prescription for cylindrical lenses, which I took downtown that day to be filled by Keller and George. Those were the first spectacles I ever had in my life, and to this hour I am still using practically that same prescription for astigmatism, and can truthfully say that I have not had another headache from the day that I went to Dr. Barringer's office.

My recollection is that William Holding Echols (1859-1934) ,and Dr. Barringer both came to the University as members of the faculty during the session of 1889-90, and that Dr. William G. Christian was appointed Demonstrator of Anatomy to help Dr. Towles in 1890. "Reddy" Echols, as he was called from the colour of his hair, was as distinguished in appearance as he was superior in intellect, certainly one of the handsomest men I ever beheld. He was made adjunct-professor of Applied Mathematics doubtless in order to relieve Mr. Thornton to some extent, whose duties as Chairman of the Faculty were certainly not light. About a decade later when Colonel Venable retired, Echols stepped into his shoes as professor of pure Mathematics and held that post thereafter as long as he lived. "Reddy" Echols was a

man of wonderful charm and powerful personality, who spoke his mind freely and never hesitated to take his stand openly for what he believed to be right. His friends, colleagues and pupils alike, all loved him, and if he had any enemies, as such a forceful character is bound to have, I venture to say they both feared and respected him.

Colonel Venable had for his assistant James Shannon Miller (d. 1944), instructor in Mathematics, whom we called "Math. Miller." He bad the everlasting credit of explaining to me the real nature of a differential coefficient and putting me on really friendly terms with that chief agent in the mysterious realm of the calculus. Afterwards for more than half a century Dr. Miller was an eminent professor of Mathematics in Emory and Henry College.

Colonel Peters had an assistant also, Robert Somerville Radford (1869-1936), young and erudite instructor in Latin, sometimes known as "the Radford," as if he were the one and only specimen of that rara avis. Certainly Bob Radford was one of the queerest of mortals, awkward, shy, and lonely, who mumbled his words and spoke a jargon that was utterly unintelligible to me; yet withal he was an undoubted prodigy and star of the first magnitude in his own peculiar sphere. His territory was in the field of the dead languages, and there he could cross swords with his official superiors, Colonel Peters and Mr. Humphreys themselves, and even come off victorious. Dr. Radford, a bachelor to the day of his death, was for many years professor of Latin in the University of Tennessee.

It has often been pointed out that puris omnia pura is not to be interpreted as meaning that to boys everything is pure and sacred, for nothing could be more contrary to the truth. Much as we admired our honoured teachers in the 1880's, we were not above poking fun at them whenever we got a chance. Herbert Barry's epic poem to which I have alluded is an instance of how irreverent and satirical we could be on occasion, especially when we had a feeling of resentment and a score to pay. In Jack

Mosby's delightful operetta called "The Flirt," described as being "a tragedy in imitation of Aeschylus," which likewise appeared originally in the University Magazine (1889), the "chorus of professors" is represented as formed in two concentric circles revolving slowly in opposite directions while the sages chant in unison the following song: And so the chorus continues through still another strophe and anti-strophe, the words whereof are extant to this day in Arcade Echoes. The "flirt" herself, who was the heroine or else the villain of this "tragedy," was said to be Alice Robertson who married Allen Hanckel and thereby put an end to Jack Mosby's aspirations. However, these stirring events happened before my time, in fact before I had ever suspected that there was such a dangerous animal as a "flirt" on earth, and I must confess that I am merely retailing the gossip I heard afterwards.

In the 1880's, the prestige of the University of Virginia throughout the South, as I have implied already, was still very high, as it had been in ante-bellum days during the first quarter of a century of its existence. I daresay it would be safe to say that a large majority of the leading instructors in the principal schools in that section of the country were themselves graduates of the University of Virginia, trained in her ideals, imbued with her traditions, and loyal to her allegiance. Thus steadily, year by year, more and more firmly the institution founded by Thomas

Jefferson acquired a kind of educational hegemony in the South, as undisputed as it was unavowed, in some respects not unlike the domination and powerful influence wielded by Oxford and Cambridge over the public schools in England. It was so complete and extended so far that even the textbooks in use in most of the southern schools and colleges of that day, more likely than not English in origin, were more or less identical with those sanctioned by adoption and custom in the University of Virginia. This supremacy gave the University a unique position and a certain distinction in comparison with all the other colleges in the United States. Of course, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were older, larger, richer, and more famous in the country at large; nevertheless, the University of Virginia, different in origin and development, had its own peculiar excellence and its own cherished aims. Moreover, however provincial we may have been in those days, it was certainly true that teachers and pupils alike had faith in our own ideals and standards. We believed they were high and trustworthy, and so far from having what is called an "inferiority complex," it was told of Mr. Minor, for example, that the old gentleman never doubted for an instant that the sun rose in the morning for the express purpose of revolving around the University of Virginia!

A half century ago the total number of students, as has been noted already, was comparatively small, more than half of them coming from Virginia alone, and perhaps more than a third from all other parts of the South including Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. Nowadays the total enrollment has mounted from the hundreds into the thousands, and whereas less than a sixth of the matriculates used to come from regions outside the southern states, it was reported in the Alumni News for July, 1943, that of more than two thousand students who were in attendance in the previous session, only a hundred and sixty-five hailed from all the southern states put together outside of Virginia.

There have been profound changes all over the globe since 1890,nor is it surprising that the University of Virginia has had

its vicissitudes also, no doubt with notable improvements in some respects. However, the point I wish to make here is that there was a time when the student body comprised the élite of the youth not of Virginia only but of the entire South, young men who were distinguished intellectually as well as socially and who Might fairly be considered as representing a cross-section of the highest type of southern civilization and aristocracy in the literal sense of the latter word. Many of these lads who came from Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans and other less populous towns or from the big plantations in the South had been to school in Virginia before they arrived at the University and were old pupils of Hanover Academy, the Episcopal High School, Bellevue or some other famous school that flourished then in the Old Dominion.

In that admirable essay on the Honour System written by Mr. Thornton in 1906, the writer begins by reminding us of Mr. Jefferson's original plan for creating at the University of Virginia what he himself called an "academic village" in which "the unit was a professor's residence (including his schoolroom) and an adjoining group of single-storey dormitories for students", and then towards the end of the essay Mr. Thornton, alluding .again to this peculiar type of architectural construction, writes as follows:

"Jefferson's academic village lent itself most admirably to the creation of such an academic life. The professors lived amidst their students and the physical nearness of dormitory and pavilion translated itself into social courtesies and moral contacts. The students themselves were brought into natural and unconstrained intercourse with each other and learned to know and to trust each other and to live a common life with common aims and common ideals.

"Virginia was happy also in the qualities of her professors. They were men of high social standards, of sound scholarship, of noble aspiration. Many of them had acquired wide experience of life and deep knowledge of men, More than one possessed rare

executive powers. But with it all and above all they were gentlemen and added the gracious courtesy of their caste to the force of robust intelligence and the energy of virile natures. Only today [Mr. Thornton continues] I stood with Colonel Mosby before a pavilion on West Lawn. 'Here,' said he, 'lived a man whom I reverenced and still reverence above all men. Not even before General Lee on the battlefield did I stand with such awe .and admiration as before Professor Courtenay.'* It was the daily intercourse with these men that transformed student-life in Virginia and brought the Honour System to its birth."

Now here is another point which cannot be stressed too much

or too often, especially nowadays when all over the earth men and women seem to be cast adrift from ancient moorings and are only too prone to follow strange gods and bow down before false idols. Trite as it may sound, it is worth repeating: The foundation of a great university rests above all on the character and quality of the teachers. Qualified men are not easy to find, but the search for them should be unceasing. Laboratories and libraries are good and even indispensable, but the one thing needful, the sine qua non, is the man who knows how to use them or in some cases can make shift to do without them. If he be lacking, your library or your laboratory, well appointed as it may be, is a delusion and a snare, amounting to little more than absolute zero. The professor is the life-giving spirit, the motive power, the man behind the gun. Nay, in innumerable instances the teacher himself is all in all, and his apparatus, if he has any at all, counts for very little. The whole equipment of a chair of Mathematics is little more than a blackboard and a stick of chalk; yet how it may flourish in the hands of a Gauss or a Poincaré! Willingly enough I grant that a Faraday must have his laboratory; yet behold what Faraday accomplished in the comparatively

empty laboratory that was vouchsafed him in his lifetime, and see also how much less has been achieved in other laboratories with. a thousand times the material equipment! Perhaps I myself am as familiar with great and imposing laboratories and workshops as anybody can be, for I have lived amid luxuries of that kind and am no longer deceived by them, important and essential as such things may be and sometimes really are. Yet they are not the measure, much less the criterion, of real worth or real accomplishment, far from it indeed. The crowning ornament and the unique glory of a great university may be a single individual, a Courtenay or a Gildersleeve, a William B. Rogers or a John B. Minor.

Honour breeds manliness and courage, and courage for righteousness' sake is the highest virtue of civilization. Amid the

ravages of time and the fall of empires it is in the universities most of all that the torch of civilization is kept burning, dim and uncertain as the light sometimes is during what are called the dark ages, and thus the sacred fire has been handed down from

generation to generation.

The so-called Honour System in the University of Virginia originated, I believe, more than a century ago. It was certainly nothing new to me when I first came to college, for I had grown up in that atmosphere in McGuire's School in Richmond where the Honour System was just as simple and efficient, it seems to me, as it was in the University itself. Every boy who attended one of those old private academics in Virginia knew instinctively that he was bound by it. Noblesse oblige - that was all there was to it, and we simply took it for granted. It was above all an unwritten code, elemental, natural, not to be called in question, not even a subject of discussion, much less a source of pride or boasting. It had seldom to be enforced because it was seldom violated, and that in my opinion was the real secret of its successful operation.

Several years ago I was annoyed by a structural fault in the

foundation of my dwelling house, in consequence of which, usually after a hard rain, a considerable quantity of water would seep in through the walls of the cellar and be deposited in a pool on the concrete floor. My nephew Charles Henderson, a professor of Engineering in the University of Virginia, advised me to get an electric pump for discharging the water and offered to install it for me. I took his advice and was fortunate indeed to have his help, and from that day to this I ceased to have any further trouble from water collecting in my cellar. The pump was automatic and required little or no attention except the application of a drop or two of oil about once a year. Indeed I had almost forgotten its existence until the other day I happened to hear it in operation down below for a space of time that certainly did not exceed a couple of minutes, and then all was silent again. I descended into the cellar to have a look at it, and there, sure enough, were the traces of moisture on the floor, yet not a .drop of water left to be seen. The pump had risen to the occasion apparently without effort and had punctually and faithfully performed its duty. It seemed to me a wonderful piece of mechanism, and so simple withal; I gazed at it with -admiration. Involuntarily, I said to myself, That pump is like the Honour System, -and works the same way when it works at all-no fuss, absolutely unobtrusive, as little machinery as possible, and perfect efficiency.

A code of honour does not have to be codified and expounded. It has no legal sanction, and indeed as to its standards and penalties both, it may be open to question; only, it cannot be violated with impunity. As far as my experience. goes, that was how the Honour System operated in the University of Virginia. How adequate and salutary it was is shown by the fact that during the five years from 1888 to 1893 which covered my period of personal participation and observation, I myself was not cognisant of but one single instance in which the Honour System was invoked. The affair was not noised abroad, and here and now is the first public mention of it. Snowden Marshall and

I were the only witnesses of the offense, and as in duty bound we went together to the culprit's dormitory on East Range and advised him to pack his belongings and leave college without a moment's delay. I have forgotten the fellow's name, but I know that he disappeared that same evening or perhaps the next morning, never to return. Unless he himself divulged it, his disgrace was never known.

One reason I had for quoting at length that striking passage from Mr. Thornton's essay was in order to stress the point that the faculty is as much a party to the Honour System as the student body, for in this code there is no longer any distinction between pupils and teachers, both parties being absolutely on the same footing with respect to integrity and good faith. In order for the pump in my cellar to do its appointed task, unbidden and unthwarted, the installation must have the proper setting and capacity, else the machinery will inevitably break down. So likewise the Honour System can flourish only in congenial surroundings; that is, in my judgment, in a comparatively small community composed of homogeneous parts that fit naturally in one another and are not apt to fall asunder. In the course of my life I have had some opportunity of experimenting with the Honour System in three or four colleges north and south, and I believe I have a pretty good idea of how feasible or unfeasible it is, depending on the strain to which it is subjected.

Let the teacher, to begin with, be a man with the character and qualifications of Professor Courtenay or Colonel Venable, a type, it must be admitted, not easy to reproduce, and let his class, not too large and unwieldy, be composed of average American students, sons of honest and respectable parents; then, under such favourable conditions I am disposed to believe that an Honour System is almost certain to be developed of its own accord. When the pattern of honour is held before the eyes of ingenuous youth, verily I believe, there be none so quick as they to wish in their hearts to live by it.