University of Virginia Library

IV

FIRST GLIMPSE IN NATURE'S REALM

1889-1890

As long as Charley Carrington was in residence as a student, his hospitable room on East Lawn was indeed a model of comfort and cleanliness, but when he abandoned it and turned it over to me, chaos was its proper name. The rubbish had all to be cleared away before the floors and walls could be washed and scoured, but at last when the carpet was laid and the furniture put in place, I contemplated my work with much satisfaction and said to myself that my new habitation had an air of respectability, to say the least.

Now if a young lady, bent on some errand or other or perhaps just taking a morning stroll, happened to saunter past the open door of a dormitory room on the arcade, she would never have dared to peep inside, no matter how great her curiosity might have been, for in the days of my youth the rules of feminine decorum were rigidly prescribed, and unbecoming conduct, as it used to be called, could give rise to scandal. However, if she and I met each other outside, and particularly if at that moment I was lucky enough to be in tier good graces, she would be apt to inquire what was the colour of my curtains in case she might take it into her pretty little head to make a bow of ribbon to hold the folds in place. Of course, Aunt Mary's stepdaughters,

Mary, Cantey, and Natalie Venable, my next-door neighbours, were almost like my own first cousins. However, not even the boldest of the three would have been so indiscreet as to put her tiny foot inside the door of my room on the Lawn, but Cantey made a lambrequin to hang over the mantelpiece, Natalie gave me an upholstered chair that had come out of her own room upstairs in the house next door, and "Mamie" (as the eldest sister used to be called) was constantly sending ebon George, the high and mighty butler, to bring me a saucer of chocolate ice cream during those laborious days when often as not I was to be found standing on a chair and trying to hang a picture properly without anybody near at hand to tell me whether the frame was tipped too far one way or the other and was exactly midway between the head of the bed and the foot.

One day soon after the session began, being in a hurry to get to class, I forgot to bolt the latch on the door when I left the room, and when I returned about an hour later, a beautiful old gold watch which I had carelessly laid on the end of the mantelpiece was gone! I never laid eyes on it again. It was a cherished heirloom bequeathed to me by my old "mammy" Malvina Sparks when she made tier will and died in my father's home some years before I came to college. Inside the case an inscription was engraved relating that the watch had been given to Malvina by her old mistress Miss Matilda Southall of Williamsburg, a lady. who died long before I was born. I prized this watch not for its own sake only, but because it was the sole token I had in the world of the dearly beloved old coloured lady by whose side I had stood so often when I was a little boy and she was making gingerbread on the kitchen table. Aunt Mary had known Malvina too, and she was full of sympathy when I told her of the loss of my watch and she insisted on sending at once for the only policeman in the town of Charlottesville. He was an old Confederate soldier with a wooden leg, and in spite of all that he could do, no trace of the thief was ever found. Only a few years ago I lost another valuable heirloom in much the same way. It was a gold

watch chain which my honoured father-in-law, William R. Abbot, Esq., of Bellevue in Bedford County, Virginia (1838-1916), wore in his waistcoat to the day of his death, and which I had worn ever since with a Phi Beta Kappa key attached to it. I believe I would give all my earthly possessions if only Malvina's watch and Mr. Abbot's gold chain were restored to me!

Soon after the session opened, Aunt Mary took me aside one day and took me by surprise also, for she asked me how I would like to be Colonel Venable's private secretary and get my meals at her table by way of compensation. The payment was ample, and I told her immediately that nothing could be more to my taste and particularly the meals at her table which I had tasted many times already and knew how good they were. Besides, if the truth must be told, I welcomed the joyous prospect of being brought three times daily in company of tier gay and charming stepdaughters, to say nothing of the pleasure that would be afforded by the elder members of the household also. I knew well what a genial and jolly old soul Colonel Venable could be when he was not in his classroom and was separated entirely from Solid Analytic Geometry. As I have already mentioned, he had an inexhaustible fund of good stories and memorabilia of his eventful life, just the night before when I was there for supper he had told me about an aristocratic old gentleman in Halifax County, a friend of his father, who when he was solicited to vote for Thomas Jefferson, of Albemarle, for president of the United States, shook his head thoughtfully and firmly declined to do so because Mr. Jefferson lived at Monticello, and that was "a little too fur North" in his opinion.

Even on a strictly business basis, undoubtedly I bad the best of the new bargain, for now I did not have to pay for my meals in a boardinghouse and my duties as private secretary were more nominal than real. As well as I could see, my chief business was to make myself agreeable to every member of the family. Occasionally, it might be as often as once a week, the Colonel would send for me to come to his office on the other side of the house

from my room on the Lawn and would give me a manuscript notebook wherein certain pages had been turned down for me to copy early next morning on the blackboard in his lecture-room. My recollection is that this ancient and dilapidated volume contained young Venable's original notes, made when he was a student in Germany before the outbreak of the Civil War, and if so, I can testify that his handwriting in youth was nearly as illegible as it was later in life. I deciphered these enigmatic compositions as best I could, mathematical formulae and all, and if the transcription I wrote on the board was not a faithful copy in every detail, nobody, not even the Colonel himself, ever questioned it or compared it with the authentic version.

After ransacking my memory I can recall only one other duty that I was called on to perform that year in my capacity of private secretary, and certainly from my point of view it was in the nature of a frolic rather than a task. When Colonel Venable was Chairman of the Faculty, he had inaugurated a system of University Extension Teaching which I never clearly under stood only I know it involved holding yearly examinations in certain accredited academics and schools in the state of Virginia. Accordingly, towards the end of the session he commissioned me as his duly appointed representative to conduct a series of examinations that were held that year in a Jesuit ' School or Roman Catholic Seminary in the city of Alexandria and perhaps also in the Episcopal High School near by, for I remember spending one night in the latter institution. Invested as I was with some thing like proconsular authority, I went on this mission with a high sense of my own dignity and importance. The question papers had all been prepared beforehand by certain professors in the Academic Department of the University, and all I had to do was to preside at the ceremony of holding the examinations and to take care that everything was carried out with due decorum. Perhaps I was absent from the University on this business for an interval of three days.

Here I may mention another little job I had this session that

was likewise a source of pleasure and profit, though it was without pecuniary reward. The Faculty Reading Room, as it used to be called, was a pet project of Professor Perkinson, and indeed I suppose he was the prime mover in it. It occupied two communicating dormitory rooms on East Lawn between Mr. Schele's pavilion and that of Dr. Holmes, and fairly regularly every afternoon a number of professors might be found there who had come to read the newspapers and current magazines in much the same way as the reading room of the Colonnade Club on the other side of the Lawn is used nowadays. Professor Perkinson offered to give me access to this clubroom on condition that I keep the periodicals in order, replacing the old numbers with the new ones that came by post from day to day. The task took little time, and I was glad to have an opportunity of glancing through the papers and magazines. However, the chief advantage was that I got to be acquainted with nearly all the members of the faculty, indeed almost on terms of familiarity with some of them, especially the younger men and instructors who were nearer my own age. One day when I happened to be present, Colonel Peters and Mr. Humphreys were having a hot dispute about a line of Juvenal which neither of them could remember word for word. Now in the old days at Richmond College, Juvenal was, so to speak, "right up my alley," and by a stroke of good luck that particular line (about Syrian Orontes having been emptied into the Tiber)* was on the tip of my tongue, and out I came with it, much to the astonishment of my learned superiors. Colonel Peters, a generous, kindhearted man, patted me on the back and prophesied that the world would hear from me one day; yet great as Colonel Peters was in his own line, and much as he may have had the "gift of tongues," alas, he did not have the gift of prophecy.

As I look back on it now, it seems to me that that session when I was virtually a member of the Venable household was certainly

one of the happiest years of my life, profitable and noteworthy in many ways. It was a high privilege to be closely associated with such a great gentleman and scholar as Colonel Venable. His eldest daughter, who did all the housekeeping and presided at the head of the dinner table opposite her father, was a very accomplished young woman. At that time she was already engaged to be married to Dr. Charles Lancelot Minor, of Brooklyn, New York, who had graduated in Medicine a year or two previously and was afterwards to be known all over the land as one of the leading authorities in the diagnosis and treatment of tubercular diseases. Cantey Venable was a very gifted and cultured young lady also, with a large circle of friends and admirers of both sexes. Before I finished college she was wedded to Clarence Dallam, of Paducah, Kentucky, but alas, her life was cut short and she died in 1891.

Natalie Venable, youngest of the three sisters, was a charming débutante then, and I can testify that she did a thriving and disconcerting business among the students. I might have sued for her hand myself had I not realized early in the action that I never could stand the ghost of a chance against such formidable rivals as Hampden Bagby, Sherrard Tabb, Stewart Bryan, and Raleigh Minor who were among the foremost aspirants. Her choice of Raleigh in the end was a lucky one for me, for I was ever afterwards a welcome guest in their hospitable home on West Lawn where they lived so many happy years after he got to be a distinguished professor of Law, as his father was before him.

That year when I was Colonel. Venable's secretary, his elder son Frank Preston Venable was already professor of Chemistry in the University of North Carolina and destined to be president of that college not long afterwards. One other member of Aunt Mary's household was her darling son and only child, then still a schoolboy about twelve years old and now the famous surgeon, Dr. Charles Scott Venable, Jr., of San Antonio, Texas.

An incidental advantage of being a guest at Aunt Mary's

table was that it gave me the opportunity of meeting many eminent and interesting people who happened to be entertained in her home from time to time. It was there, for example, that I was introduced to President Grover Cleveland, though I doubt whether that exalted personage ever knew of my existence. It was there too that I first became acquainted with Dr. Barringer and his wife at a dinner given in their honour soon after they came to the University and lived in their first home on East Range.

The two families of Minor and Venable lived next door to each other on East Lawn and were allied by close ties of ancient friendship. The first time I came in contact with Raleigh Minor, DKE, and his elder brother John, Chi Phi, who bore his father's honoured name, was in my uncle's house on Park Street in Charlottesville, where Mary, Martha, and "Dolly" Southall were already eligible young ladies with many admirers before I ever* came to college. My special chums in the Minor household were Raleigh and his younger sister Nannie Jacquelin Minor, but indeed I was fondly attached to every member of that big family, old and young alike. The Minor's of Albemarle have ever been a comely race, men and women both; yet, it seems to me, Raleigh Colston Minor was the comeliest of them all, as certainly he was one of the most loveable of men. His handsome and distinguished appearance was conspicuous in any company where he was present, and the qualities of his mind and heart were no less rare and beautiful than his outward countenance. Full well I know, "I shall not look upon his like again."

Mr. Minor's private sanctum and study, in the last dormitory room on East Lawn, communicated with the drawing room in his pavilion by a door that had been made in the intervening wall. The affable and dignified old gentleman liked the society of young people, and even when he was supposed to be engrossed in more serious occupations, he contrived to overhear much of the nonsense and merriment that echoed in the evening from the adjacent room where his lively daughters and their swains were

holding carnival. At last his secret inclinations would get the better of him, and presently we would be aware of Mr. Minor's stately presence standing in our midst. Instantly everyone rose to his feet to greet him. True, we stood in awe of him, his own children most of all; yet I was bolder than the rest, rather an impudent youngster, I daresay. Of course, my salutation was perfectly respectful, but the young ladies could scarcely conceal their consternation when I asked their father to tarry awhile and make himself perfectly at home in our midst. Mr. Minor took kindly to me, always showing me some mark of favour, and I shall always believe there was a bond of mutual affection between us.

Every morning as soon as breakfast was finished and before the company rose from the table, Mr. Minor had family prayers in the big dining room across the hall from the parlour. The congregation was generally a large one, including not only Mrs. Minor herself — "Aunt Ellen," as we used to call her — and her numerous stepchildren as well as the maidservant and the manservant (old "Uncle Alfred" who helped to wait on the table as best he could in spite of his obvious rheumatism and other infirmities), but all the strangers also who happened to be "within the gates" of that hospitable mansion, quite a goodly number as a rule. I remember the ceremony well because I was there for breakfast many times whenever I spent the night and shared Raleigh's room upstairs. It began with the formal reading of a long chapter in the Bible which Mr. Minor expounded as

he went along, occasionally asking hard and uncomfortable questions only too apt to expose the ignorance of his hearers, or, what was worse, their sinful inattention. Then at, a given signal, with much noise and clatter, all with one accord pushed their chairs back from the table and knelt devoutly on their knees. At this moment I was deathly afraid of sneezing or of being taken with a fit of hiccoughs, for then Mr. Minor would wait patiently until perfect silence prevailed, but the interruption was considered to be both unnecessary and unseemly. It goes almost without saying that Mr. Minor prayed long and fervently, never

omitting, it seemed to me, to implore the divine blessing on every man and beast, not at home only but in the far jungles of Africa where the heathen were naturally a source of Christian anxiety.

On one particularly memorable occasion I, sitting at table with my back to the Latrobe stove, was wretchedly uncomfortable all through breakfast, and when the time came to kneel down in front of that furnace, my temperature had almost reached the point of combustion. I looked behind me under the table and described there in the darkness a clear, unimpeded, if somewhat circuitous, passage leading between the feet of the prostrate company to what appeared to be a vacant space on the opposite side of the long table. Instantly and unhesitatingly I crawled towards the distant haven, trying to make as little disturbance as possible and somewhat painfully aware that, even if I reached port in safety, no chair was placed there for my elbows to rest on and that I would be left kneeling as it were in mid-air without visible means of support. As soon as the benediction was pronounced, I leaped to my feet hoping to mingle with the throng and escape without detection, but Mr. Minor quickly spied me, and chuckling all over with mirth (for he divined what had happened), expressed astonishment at finding me after prayers on the other side of the room. There was nothing to do but to make a clean breast of it, and so I retorted, "Well, sir, fire in an ordinary oven may not be as consuming is hell-fire in the New Testament about which you were telling us just now, but the oven was closer to me at the moment and appeared to be the greater evil of the two." Mr. Minor took his cane from the outstretched hand of the old coloured butler, and pointing it at me, "Alfred," said he, "the next time that young gentleman is here for breakfast, please find a seat for him as far from Hades as possible."

On remote Monroe Hill the atmosphere had not been so charged with combustibles as it was on the Lawn in the midst of the rivalry and jealousy between the different sororities. We are told in the Bible, "Ye cannot serve God and mammon," but as far as I know, scripture is silent about not swearing allegiance to

two different girls at the same time. In my new environment I found that if I ranged myself in the Venable-Minor camp, it was more or less an understood thing that I must not be seen too often with one of the  Burthe  girls or their feminine allies. So it came to pass (even now I am ashamed to confess it) that almost imperceptibly and unwittingly my visits to "Clermont," where I had been wont to spend so many happy and delightful hours, and where such kindly welcome had always greeted me, got to be less and less frequent until at last they ceased entirely. Such is the way of thoughtless, thankless, and uncivil youth; yet I ought to have known it is not the way of a gentleman. To this day the remembrance of my infidelity to dear and lovely Maggie Mason is like a blot on my scutcheon.

It was hard to say whether the  Burthe  girls annexed the ATO fraternity, lock, stock, and barrel, or whether those dashing and impetuous youths had one and all sworn an oath that they, and they only, were to be the guardians and champions of those enchanting sisters. Yet I knew it was as much as the life of a DKE was worth in those days for him to pay serious attention to Maggie, Nonnie, or Maud; though now and then, I myself did venture on their premises and once indeed ran foul of a statuesque maiden, one of their cousins from New Orleans, who might easily have turned my head, had I not found out in time that Edwin Hobson would not brook trespassing on his preserves.

Now Charles Minor who married Mary Venable happened to be a Delta Psi, and I have always wondered if it were by virtue of that connection that along about 1890-91, the brotherhood of St. Anthony, Stewart Bryan, Billy Peterkin, Winslow Randolph, Tom Pinckney and all their subalterns, took over Cantey and Natalie Venable with as little compunction or ceremony as the Nazis showed when they invaded Norway in 1940. No matter what time of day you happened to call on either one of those popular young ladies, she was almost sure to be surrounded by a phalanx of devoted Delta Psi's; and Hampden Bagby used to complain bitterly that so far as he was concerned, "Miss Natalie

might as well be incommunicado," unless he chose to have an interview under the watchful eye of a Delta Psi sentinel.

In the way of education, and apart from Mathematics, the past decade of my life had been spent exclusively among the ancients, nor can I say now, according to my mature judgment, that that precious time of youth had been spent in vain, in. view of the fact that the roots of modern culture and civilization go deep down in the centuries of the past. The study of Greek and Latin is certainly an excellent mental discipline if it be nothing more, and at least I had acquired a certain power of learning intelligently and comprehendingly each new lesson appointed to be done. Yet it is strange indeed to think that at the age of eighteen I was as ignorant as the ancients themselves of the magic realm of science that had flourished and borne fruit ever richer and richer from the time of the discovery of America and the renascence of Europe. Undoubtedly, my second session in the University of Virginia when for the first time in my life I set foot in this new kingdom of knowledge was the turning point of all my education. Before that year, Natural Philosophy had been to me a name only as to the meaning whereof I had only the dimmest conception; now it was a case of love at first sight. Greece and Rome were left behind as if they had never mattered!

At that period it had not entered my head to think of planning my course of study with a view to obtaining the degree of Master of Arts, and I suppose it must have been simply a genuine thirst for knowledge that led me to apply that year for graduation in the Schools of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry. Doubtless I consulted my father and he approved of the programme. How was it that nobody told me that it was nothing short of folly to take the senior class in Natural Philosophy without having completed the prerequisite course in the junior class? Yet no human being interposed the slightest objection or gave me a word of advice.

"Junior Natural" was intended to be a rather thorough survey of general physics, not altogether elementary, yet not difficult, only perfectly novel to me. On the other hand, "Senior Natural," by common consent supposed to be the hardest subject in the M.A. curriculum of those, days, was indeed a very advanced course on "Sound and Light," which it might be inferred was entirely beyond my grasp at the time. The first lesson was in a formidable little textbook called Vibratory Motion and Sound, the very title seemed to give me vertigo. I plunged headlong into this sea of symbols and mathematical formulae, floundering from one page to the next in the vain hope of clutching hold of a solid rock where I could rest and have a breathing spell. Worse even than this preliminary textbook was the solid array of "Notes" with which Professor Smith had covered all the blackboards before the class assembled and which had to be copied after class, even if no clue could be gained as to the meaning thereof. So great, was my bewilderment that I sought refuge in the old library in the whispering gallery of the rotunda, consulting every learned treatise I could find there that might if possible cast a ray of illumination on the ineffable mystery of "Light and Sound" in which I was enmeshed. Only the other day I visited the imposing new Alderman Library that now adorns the University of Virginia, and quite unexpectedly and unaccountably a feeling of curiosity seized me to look again at Sir John Herschel's celebrated article on "Light" published originally in 1828 in the London Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, for, it had been one of the luminous and voluminous treatises I waded through that year when I was a candidate for graduation in the School of Natural Philosophy. I wondered if that huge old folio tome, nearly if not quite as big as Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, was indeed still in existence, and if perchance it had escaped combustion in the fire of 1895 when the rotunda itself came so near being consumed. The courteous attendant brought the identical volume to me and placed it in my hands once more,

safe and sound, almost hale and hearty still. As I opened it and turned to the long essay on "Light," written so soon after the triumph of the Young-Fresnel undulatory theory, a. little scrap of note paper lying between the pages fell to the floor. I stooped down and picking it up, recognized my own youthful handwriting, the pencil marks as unfaded as if it had been written yesterday instead of nearly threescore years ago. From that day to this, I thought to myself, this particular volume had remained unopened, and no other student in the University of Virginia had ever taken the trouble to read Sir John Herschel's epoch-making essay on "Light."

Not wretched William Cowper himself nor the poet's "Castaway" I think was ever more at sea that I was that first half-year in "Senior Natural"; yet even then I was buoyed up by an unquenchable enthusiasm and an abiding faith that I was on the verge of a strange new world nobler and richer than all I had ever seen before.

Meanwhile at the same time I was attending regularly the lectures in the junior class with eager enjoyment and not without profit and instruction. Strange as it may sound to some of my youthful contemporaries (if any such are still alive), I believe I can truthfully say I never missed a syllable that was uttered, for in those impressionable days I was under some kind of a spell. Mr. Smith was my hero, and I was his humble disciple. As I gazed at him from my seat in class just as the lecture was about to begin, I used to say to myself in a kind of ecstasy:

In the first place Mr. Smith had indeed a beautiful mind that seemed to be reflected is much in his countenance as in the words that fell from his lips. Ben Jonson said of Shakespeare that he loved the man and honoured his memory "on this side idolatry as much as any," and such was the admiration and adoration I felt then for "Frank Smith," as we fondly called him.

No doubt Mr. Smith's lectures were over the beads of most of us, and equally no doubt many of his youthful hearers like careless Gallio in the Bible were downright bored. Yet even the dullest member of the class was bound to be thrilled by the sudden and unexpected burst of eloquence that from time to time fell upon the ears of all who were present in that crowded lecture-room. At that moment it was as if "Frank Smith" were communing with himself, oblivious of his surroundings and unmindful of his audience, transfigured and borne aloft on the wings of his high imagination. Usually the great moment came at the climax of a successful experiment that had just been demonstrated to the class. It might be elicited perhaps by the manifest evidence of the prodigious force of water expanding in the act of freezing and bursting asunder an iron bomb shell; or by the beautiful geometrical union of two soap bubble films in strict obedience to the laws of surface-tension in liquids; or by the symmetrical sand pattern that delineated the nodal lines on a plate of brass that had been startled by the bow of a violin into a spasm of musical ecstasy; or indeed by any one of a hundred strange and exquisite natural phenomena such as we had never seen before or dreamed could' come to pass. "Frank Smith" himself seemed to glow with new rapture and astonishment, childlike and unfeigned, each time he summoned his wonder-working "daemon" to appear and do his bidding before the whole assembled "Junior Natural" class, and as he spoke his incantation, the whole class with one accord thundered with applause.

My old colleague George Vincent Wendell, himself a great teacher of Physics in Columbia University, told me that once when he was connected with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Francis H. Smith of the University of Virginia had been invited to Boston to deliver the principal address on

some momentous occasion and that it was by all odds the most eloquent speech he ever heard in his life. I can well believe it, and yet I doubt whether that notable oration in the city of Boston was as eloquent and stirring as many an unconscious and spontaneous soliloquy we used to overhear when Mr. Smith stood before us in his own lecture-room lost in admiration of one of nature's miracles which he had just performed for our benefit and instruction and, like Shelley's skylark, poured forth his heart "in profuse strains of unpremeditated art."

Mr. Smith had been a pupil of William B. Rogers (1804-1882), and doubtless he had learned from that illustrious master the art of experimental dexterity and manipulation. Much of his apparatus was made by his own hands and was often exceedingly ingenious, all the more useful and efficient for being so plain and simple. The demonstration and measurement of the earth's diurnal rotation by means of Foucault's pendulum was always a notable day in class, and then the old lecture-room in the "Annex" would be crowded by spectators from all parts of the University. The pendulum was hung from the roof of the building, and as the heavy iron bob swung slowly to and fro just over the top of the lecture table, a delicate little lever with a tiny bit of mirror-glass fastened by sealing wax at the end of the long arm was brushed aside ever so little at each transit, while a spot of light reflected from the mirror traversed a distant scale on the wall and recorded the movement of the earth. I believe this impressive experiment was duly performed each session, never once unsuccessfully, as far as I know.

Luminous fountains and cascades of water are such a common spectacle nowadays that often they may be seen by night even at a village fair without exciting comment, much less wonder and awe. Yet the first time I ever beheld a fiery jet of water in Mr. Smith's lecture-room, darkened for the purpose, it was to me a weird and memorable sight. It so happened that day that I had been up all night at some convivial party or other, and

when I took my accustomed seat in class I was too drowsy to keep my eyes open. Suddenly I was aroused by the sound of applause all around me in the completely dark room except that a little distance in front of me I perceived to my astonishment what seemed to be a molten stream of fire issuing from an invisible source and disappearing on the floor beneath. For a moment I thought my last hour was come and I was on the brink of inferno! In order to make the experiment more striking, as I found out afterwards, Mr. Smith had interposed a plate of red glass in the path of the beam of sunlight reflected into the room from the heliostat on the window sill outside, and it was the red light condensed by a lens to a focus just behind the orifice near the bottom of the tall cylindrical reservoir mounted on a table that had imparted its own colour to the out-pouring jet of water. Yet even with this explanation it was hard at first for me to comprehend how the innumerable rays of light, caught and imprisoned in the jet by total internal reflection, were compelled to pursue the parabolic arc of the falling stream of liquid.

Thus during the whole of that session, hardly a day went by without my witnessing in class some new and striking natural phenomenon in illustration of the subject under discussion. Those ingenious and beautiful demonstrations, artfully contrived and nearly always faultlessly executed, accompanied as they often were by Mr. Smith's ejaculations of wonder and delight, brought me face to face with Nature herself, unknown, mysterious power, sublime, indifferent, above all free from any taint of human error and superstition. This was the world in which I was born, and I myself was "a child of Nature cradled in her arms until my turn comes to die and to remain somewhere and somehow in her embrace"; so I thought to myself then in the budtime of youth, but not in those words, which were nearly the last words of my dear friend Dean Woodbridge of Columbia University. I can never forget his saying, with the childlike simplicity that was so characteristic of him, that to

the end of his days he was afflicted with a sense of indecency whenever he referred to Nature as "it."

As a teacher Professor Smith was not entirely without fault. Perhaps he yielded too much to his own enthusiasm and was sometimes tempted to dwell longer than necessary on a particular subject; the consequence being that when the bell tolled for the class to be dismissed, more often than not he had failed to cover the ground that had been laid out in advance. Accordingly, when the end of the session was at hand, the latter part of the course was usually not quite finished and had to be slurred over more or less summarily and inadequately.

Nevertheless, as I look back from the standpoint of ripe judgment and larger appreciation, I am deliberately of the opinion that in thoroughness of treatment and in excellence of presentation, perhaps most of all 'in being completely abreast of the modern conceptions of the science of that day, the lectures in Natural Philosophy which I heard in the University of Virginia in 1890 were much superior to any course of general physics that was then being given in the United States. Professor Tyndall's lectures at the Royal Institution in London, where the pace had been set first by Sir Humphrey Davy and afterwards by Michael Faraday, were indeed a little earlier than my time; yet I venture to say that Professor Smith's lectures compared favourably with Tyndall's in art of exposition and in vigour of language, while I doubt whether the latter was Professor Smith's equal in mathematical insight and scientific precision.

Mr. Smith was a pillar in the Methodist church and a man of deep religious convictions at the time when the "conflict" between religion and science was fierce and bitter. The cosmogony of the book of Genesis was being called in question by the new doctrines of geology and evolution. The three musketeers of science were Herbert Spencer in philosophy, Thomas H. Huxley in biology, and John Tyndall in physics; each of whom liked nothing better than to goad his orthodox adversary and

prick every vulnerable joint in his armour. If you went to church on Sunday, the preacher in the pulpit never could finish his sermon without holding up to scorn that unholy trinity which was bent on undermining the foundations of Christian belief. If Mr. Smith ever alluded to these controversial questions in his lectures, it was only occasionally, and then more in sorrow than in rebuttal. When the upholders of divine providence cited the peculiar and anomalous behavior of water in the act of freezing as a manifest evidence of benevolent design in the laws of Nature, Professor Tyndall retorted that bismuth is another substance that likewise expands on solidifying, notwithstanding there are no fishes in bismuth whose lives are to be saved. I well remember Mr. Smith's comment in which, without taking sides one way or the other, he deplored that even so big a man as Professor Tyndall could not refrain from sneering at his opponents in an argument.

Professor Rowland at the Johns Hopkins University, who was my teacher also, was famous for having made a screw for his dividing engine which had such a fine and accurate thread that by means thereof he had been able to rule thousands of equal-space parallel lines within the width of an inch on a piece of speculum metal used for a diffraction-grating. In fact, it was such an excellent screw that in his enthusiasm Professor Rowland thought he might say it was simply perfect. However, a few years later the inventor announced that he had still further improved the original apparatus, and so one day in Senior Natural Philosophy Mr. Smith rubbed his hands and smiled blandly at us sitting there before him. "Now at last," said he, "Professor Rowland has succeeded in making a plusperfect screw."

For my part, shall I ever forget that it was "Frank Smith" who in the days of my youth held the lamp of science before my ardent eyes and lighted a kindred flame in me?

More than any man I ever knew, Dr. Mallet was imbued with the simplicity of the character of a gentleman, and such I believe

was the impression he made on those who knew him intimately. Reserved and dignified, yet always polite and affable, he was known to be of unimpeachable integrity and above reproach in every human relationship. Renowned at home and abroad, in some ways Dr. Mallet towered above all his colleagues. To me he seemed the very embodiment of the ideal man of science, accurate and painstaking, just and impartial.

The Department of Chemistry was housed in a separate building opposite West Range and directly behind the brick structure that used to be Dr. Mallet's residence, and I think it occupied the site of the building that is now used by the Department of Psychology. The class in General Chemistry, perhaps the largest in college, comprised both academic and medical students. Unlike Professor Smith, Dr. Mallet had such poise and self-restraint, and was withal so impersonal in his manner and void of outward enthusiasm, that one might have supposed that his lecture was being delivered by an animated automaton mechanically incapable of making a mistake. No matter how much his audience might be carried away — and at times we were greatly impressed — it would have been something like sacrilege to applaud the speaker or disturb the even tenour of his careful exposition and expert illustrations that dovetailed together as if they were both of one piece. During the whole hour and a half allotted to the lecture, the genius of science hovered above our heads as if to invoke both meekness and reverence, and when the lecture was finished promptly at the stroke of the clock, everybody present was aware that not a word could be added or subtracted without impairing its scientific completeness. Then Dr. Mallet bowed stiffly, disappeared quickly through the door leading to the laboratory, and the class dispersed in silence with as much sobriety and decorum as a congregation leaving church. The speaker's farewell gesture had been as much as to say, "Here endeth the lesson. He that bath cars to hear, let him hear, for this is my last word on the subject of this lecture!"

There was a printed syllabus which served as a guide for the

subject of Dr. Mallet's lectures, and it was supplemented by Fowne's Chemistry, a large funereal volume bound in black cloth, very satisfactory for a reference book. We had painstakingly to commit to memory a great array of facts in order to pass the final examination in Chemistry, but otherwise the course was not difficult. Yet I remember being seized with something like deathbed repentance the night before examination and scarcely getting a wink of sleep even after having gone to bed at last, laden with anxiety.

On all ordinary occasions, in the classroom as well as on the campus, our instructors were genial and companionable enough, made of flesh and blood like ourselves. However, on the day of examination the professor's countenance was changed, his whole demeanour was cold and distant, and it seemed as if no drop of the milk of human kindness flowed in his veins. Now in those ancient days an examination was a formal and solemn ceremony that lasted all day long, sometimes far into the night. Your previous records, "corks" and "curls" both, counted for naught, for on that day all was at stake. The penalty of failure was as sure and unrelenting as the sentence pronounced by a British judge; only, there was no appeal and no amnesty. Nothing was left to be done except to take that subject again next year from start to finish, and indeed every year thereafter until the examination was duly passed. Woe to the delinquent who fell short of the requisite mark which was seventy-five per cent and even higher in Law and Medicine.

Not all the intervening years have blotted out the painful memory of that dies irae when I took the final examination in "Senior Natural." According to my recollection there were not more than about ten candidates for graduation that year, including, besides myself, Mallory K. Cannon, James H. Corbitt, C. L. DeMott, Joe Dunn (whose M. A. that year hinged on this examination), Snowden Marshall, and "Math" (James S.) Miller (who it seems to me was at the same time instructor in Natural Philosophy that year). The clock of the rotunda

had not finished striking the appointed hour when Professor Smith, punctual to the minute that day if never before, quietly entered the lecture-room by the private door from his laboratory and immediately began writing the questions Oil the board, while we looked on in awful suspense. It was soon apparent that no mercy was to be shown that day of battle; black despair shone on every countenance, and only Mr. Smith's face was as placid and benevolent as ever.

Dr. Mallet, a member of the faculty committee appointed for holding the examination, showed his face in the torture-chamber during the course of the morning, as in duty bound, for Dr. Mallet never neglected any task however slight and unimportant. He and Mr. Smith held a whispered colloquy lasting only a few minutes and quite inaudible to our cars. Some jest or other passed between them, for both were shaking with subdued laughter. Such mirth was unseemly at that hour, and it irritated me. Then Dr. Mallet vanished as noiselessly as he had come, but the serene smile that lighted Mr. Smith's face lingered there all day.

Meanwhile my languid and irresolute pen had scarcely scrawled more than two or three aimless lines on the smooth sheet of foolscap paper spread on the writing bench before me. The questions on the blackboard were all so sinister and enigmatic that I was at a loss as to how to begin, and in desperation I tore that first sheet from the pad and began a new one, resolved to write something there, no matter how irrelevant it might be, for precious time was ebbing fast. Occasionally during that long and mournful day we paused to look around and exchange looks of silent misery with one another; then our hearts were filled with hatred towards "Frank Smith" whom we had loved once but who now had betrayed us. At length the shades of evening began to fall. It was getting dark; yet not one of us had finished his dreary task. When Henry Martin and another janitor tiptoed into the room to light the lamps, it was the signal of insurrection. With one accord we assembled

in a corner of the big lecture-room and conferred together. It was agreed to ask Mr. Smith, humbly but boldly, to have pity upon us by giving at least a single alternate question that might be substituted for one of those already on the board which we had been struggling to answer the livelong day. Snowden Marshall was deputed to be our spokesman. When we realized that Mr. Smith had graciously consented to our plea, a mighty sigh of relief was heaved from all our breasts, and now at last a ray of hope gleamed in every eye. Mr. Smith went to the blackboard and wrote a new question by the side of the old ones that had been staring us in the face; then he turned towards the class and rubbed his hands together, as he had a way of doing. The beatific smile that had never left his face beamed down upon us, and his voice was gentle as if it came from the lips of St. Francis. "Young gentlemen," he began — yet I shall not try to repeat the exact words, though I know my old friend Joe Dunn remembers each syllable and every intonation of that brief speech. The gist of it was that the question which had just been written on the board was one that had been propounded originally by Sir Isaac Newton in the form of an anagram that had to be deciphered first before it was intelligible, and that only one person had succeeded in answering it in Newton's lifetime. That champion was one of the two Bernouilli brothers, James and John, I forget which, both famous mathematicians in their day. Then was the cup of our wretchedness filled to the brim, insult was added to injury, and not one of us deigned to read Mr. Smith's translation of Newton's anagram. We signed our pledges, folded ..our foolscap pages, and piling the papers on the lecture table, marched forth into the outer darkness, without another word.

Yet the sequel of that examination was not as bad as we had feared. Strange to relate, I believe nearly all of us passed, even Joe Dunn who was certainly the most downhearted of that anxious group. After all, Mr. Smith's heart was not made of stone.

My good friend Dean Woodbridge, whose wise sayings I am fond of quoting, once pointed out the distinction between what is rational and what is reasonable. I remember his saying that it was like the difference between mind and soul, not a partition so much as a change of accent; for (said be) "when the soul thinks, it is mind; when the mind feels, it is soul." So likewise, he continued, "the rational is rigourous, impersonal and averse to compromise; the reasonable is yielding, personal, and makes compromise a virtue." Now the examination system at the University of Virginia was rational, no matter how absolutely unreasonable it may have been. It was rational inasmuch as it forced the student to strive with all his might and keep himself in trim as the athlete was bound to do who competed in the Olympic Games, and because it certainly accomplished its purpose if that purpose was to sift the chaff from the wheat. Yet it was wholly unreasonable forasmuch as it tossed the chaff aside as more or less worthless and without raison d'être at least from the point of view of the University itself. If such were indeed the purpose of this machinery, it must be admitted it was vastly efficient.

This "juggernaut" reached "an all-time high" in the session when Professor Thornton, who was then Dean of the School of Engineering, "flunked" every mother's son in the class in Kinematics and Dynamics. That was long after my day, and when I ventured once to ask Dean Thornton if the story really was true, he parried the question by saying that what he regretted most was being compelled the following year to discard an exceedingly meritorious textbook on the subject (written by Prof. J. G. Macgregor, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh) and substitute in place of it a much inferior book, simply because students were no better than dunces.

While I am far from defending the rigidity, not to say ruthlessness, of the examination system as it existed — when I was a student in the University of Virginia; yet I am bound to say

that, with all its faults, it was infinitely better in its results than the leniency that is shown in many of our colleges nowadays. Certainly there is sad waste of time and money in some of these institutions where a diploma of graduation has come to mean little more than a union card in the American Federation of Labour. My firm conviction is that nothing would be more salutary in the field of education for pupils and teachers alike than a really drastic means, whatever it may be, of winnowing from the student body all such — often through no fault of their own — as are manifestly out of place and have no business in that environment. The only reason why it is not done is because it would greatly diminish the number of so-called students in attendance, and that is a result that would be nothing short of a calamity in the eyes of trustees, legislators, and alumni! Nevertheless the purge would be beneficial in the highest degree to the delinquents themselves, many of whom would have been rescued in time to be transformed into good and useful citizens in the community. The greatest advantage, however, would be intramural, for then all the powers and resources of the school could be concentrated upon the comparatively few who are not merely capable of higher education but eager and resolute to obtain it. The teachers would be put on their mettle by their pupils, and the end achieved would be to the glory of Almighty God and for the good of the nation.

In some quarters it is getting to be the fashion to dispense with examinations altogether. The mere task of having to write a coherent and intelligent essay is in itself a useful exercise which is ample justification for requiring a student to stand a severe written examination. Anybody who has undergone the ordeal knows, if he is truthful about it, that in no other way could he have been made to get such a grasp of the subject as a whole and to comprehend its total significance.

Hardly anybody now alive is old enough ever to have seen and heard that boisterous old callithump known as a "dyke,"

which was famous enough once upon a time. The practice is said to have originated at the University of Virginia immediately after the Civil War, and it lasted down to my own day. My recollection is that a description of this barbarous custom, possibly in verse, was published in one of the early volumes of Corks and Curls. Whether or not my memory here is at fault, I do know that "The Big Horn on the Range" is the title of one of the first poems in Arcade Echoes, where it is reliably reported to have been "a mammoth dyking horn five feet and more in height" that spread terror to all "calicoists" whenever it sounded loud and fierce at dead of night. Many students in the late 1860's were old soldiers who had laid down their arms at Appomattox or had been among the remnants of General Johnston's army when it too was forced to surrender soon afterwards in North Carolina. Any one of those battle-scarred veterans would have been lucky indeed if he had been left another suit of clothes besides his ragged old uniform; and if afterwards he went to college, his scant wardrobe, such as it was, hid to do for all occasions, a funeral or a festival, a lecture in the morning or a visit to his sweetheart in the evening. In those days a guy rich enough to have a fancy waistcoat and bold enough to wear it in public was conspicuously "on a dyke," as the saying was; in other words, he was a shining mark and went abroad at his peril, as he might soon find out had he not before been aware of it.

The first "dyke" I ever witnessed took place, not long after I came to college, down on the old "Triangle" at the foot of the Lawn, which was the evening rendezvous of many a lovesick couple in the days before the Lawn was extended as far as Cabell Hill after the fire of 1895. That evening a big reception was being given in Mr. Minor's home to which, I suppose, nearly all the élite in the neighbourhood had been ceremoniously invited some days earlier. Soon after dark, the guests began to arrive, generally two at a time, a lady and the gentleman who escorted tier. Presently a solitary figure, arrayed in his best

apparel, sauntered leisurely down the arcade and turned at last to enter the door thrown wide open to receive him. By this time the gaiety within was audible and visible from the pavement outside, as the festive guests went to and fro across the wide hall between the two big front rooms. Suddenly in the solemn darkness outdoors, the ominous sound of the big tin horn was heard, reverberating far and wide, and instantly a roar of voices ascended from the Lawn like that of the rebel yell in battle. A huge mob of students who had been lying crouched on the ground, silent and invisible, leaped to its feet as if it were a band of savages, each with a lighted torch in his hands which he held aloft. At that moment I happened to be standing in front of Colonel Peters's pavilion directly opposite Mr. Minor's, and to my astonishment I saw and heard it all. It was as if Bedlam had been let loose without a moment's warning. The torches, made of waste rags dipped in kerosene each wrapped and tied around the end of a pole whose other end was grasped in the hands of what appeared to be a dancing dervish, illuminated the darkness with a weird and lurid light. The dervishes themselves were clad in nightshirts or other white linen that had been thrown over their outer garments. In the twinkling of an eye the well-dressed but hapless saunterer above mentioned, who already had one foot on the doorstep, was plucked bodily from the threshold and borne away in triumph amid jeers and shouts of joy. The procession marched the whole length of the Lawn with their captive in the front rank, who by this time was not merely dishevelled almost beyond recognition but even denuded of parts of his outer raiment. Mounting the steps of the rotunda, the motley throng yelled themselves hoarse. demanding a speech, and the poor fellow tried to comply as best he could, thereby hoping, but hoping in vain, to appease his tormentors. If any speech was ever uttered, it was drowned in the tumult. Then the mob rushed down the Lawn again all the way to the "Triangle" where they had started, and quickly separated in two parallel rows about a yard apart extending from one side of the Lawn to the other. The victim, poised at the end of the line not far from where I was standing, was held in position ready to be catapulted headlong into Mr. Minor's front hall the instant the signal was given. By the time he had run the long gauntlet, being urged forward and pushed from behind at every step, he had acquired such prodigious momentum that is was all the poor fellow could do to conic to a halt before crashing into the buttress at the rear wall of Mr. Minor's mansion, a wreck of his former self and a pitiful sight to see. Those rugged old soldiers who had trudged barefooted on the long marches of the Army of Northern Virginia or even their lusty offspring who had known all the trials and tribulations of poverty were rough playfellows at best and had a private and singular notion of full and frolic. A "dyke" was horseplay, meant to be good-natured and expected to be taken as such by all concerned, above all by the "dykee" himself, if that was his proper name, but just the same it was sheer rowdyism without a redeeming feature.

The last of these obnoxious performances was in the next session (1889-90) when a man named Bondurant, highly and justly esteemed by those who knew him, perhaps a little dandified in demeanour, was in the act of escorting Mary Mallet to a party that was being given one evening in the Chaplain's House in Gildersleeve Wood, unless I am mistaken, for now so many of the old landmarks are obliterated that I cannot always be sure about the location of the old places in and around the University. According to the accepted code, a gentleman who went to a party with a lady on his arm was inviolable and sacrosanct, but on this occasion our hero was really too tempting a prey to be permitted to escape, for he actually had on a swallow-tail coat and his wing collar was adorned by a white muslin butterfly-tie! To be sure, the lady had stepped across the threshold in safety, but Mr. Bondurant was perhaps two paces behind her and not yet quite inside the doorway. He did contrive to follow her, but not without the loss of one of his coattails that

was jerked away from behind by unseen hands. Violent words were exchanged and shouts of anger. The gentleman was not afraid of the devil, and he hurled defiance at his persecutors; nay, he even challenged the ringleaders, each in turn and by name if he knew his name, to meet him next day in single combat. Students from all over the college, most of whom had not witnessed the affair or been implicated in it, resented the outrage. Without even knowing Bondurant, some of them espoused his cause and volunteered to fight his battles for him. Next day — to make a long story short — at divers hours and at as many different places, in fact almost everywhere within and without the precincts of the University, perhaps not less than a dozen fist-fights took place, often as not between adversaries who were previously totally unacquainted with each other. The most memorable encounter was a really desperate fight between Snowden Marshall, substituting for Bondurant, and big, burly John P. East who came from the Valley of Virginia. It is doubtful whether either of those two pugilists had ever heard the other's name before that day. The sequel was that after pommelling each other unmercifully and after East had been felled to the ground once if not thrice, he and Snowden Marshall shook hands with mutual admiration. In later years both went to New York to live, and both rose to be distinguished citizens of the metropolis whose lifelong and devoted friendship for each other got to be the talk of the town.

However, public indignation on this occasion was so outspoken, and the outrage so flagrant, that the hilarious sport of "dyking" simply died a natural death and has never been heard of again from that day to this.

The session of 1889-90 was the year too when Martha Bagby, famous Richmond belle, came for a visit to Dr. William C. Dabney's family who lived in the pavilion at the north end of East Lawn that had been Dr. Cabell's residence for so many years. Naturally her advent made a great flutter not only from Dawson's Row to Carr's Hill but in town and county also as

far as the good tidings spread, for Martha Bagby was known to be "a gem of purest ray serene," as gay and sparkling as she was beautiful and precious. Her hosts sent out invitations to a big reception to be given in her honour, but as dancing was banned in that austere household, in lieu thereof, an ingenious parlour-game called "post office" was invented by resourceful Martha and her boon companion Susie Minor, for the amusement and delectation of the guests who would comprise all the Beauty and all the Chivalry of Albemarle. Many days of eager and industrious preparation were spent in advance by those two confederates, ever more and more confident of the brilliant success that would reward their efforts. In token of great favour, Miss Martha sent for me and let me into the secret; and there on the spot I was nominated and appointed to the office of "postmaster," without either giving consent or daring to demur, although at the moment I was aware neither of the duties nor of the privileges of that conspicuous rank. Meanwhile, with the aid of several other talented individuals and henchmen, the two young ladies set to work to compose all manner of humourous verses, Limericks, and lampoons which were supposed to be letters that had come through the post office addressed to all and sundry of the assembled guests, one letter for each lady and one also for the swain who accompanied her. At last the notes were all cleverly concocted, neatly written, and duly placed in their proper envelopes; and each was so facetious and appropriate that it was hard to say one was better than another where all were pronounced to be palpable hits as good as could be. Meanwhile the rumour spread that this was to be a party the like of which for mirth and innocent merriment had not been seen since the brave days when Lafayette had been fêted in Charlottesville, as indeed proved to be the literal and unvarnished truth.

The booth for the post office was located in a little alcove at the rear of the big drawing room near the foot of a winding stairway that led to the upper storey of Dr. Dabney's home, and accordingly, on the appointed evening and at a concerted signal,

all the guests from far and near were assembled in front of it eager to enjoy the frolic. Here I ought to pause to say that the postmaster whom I had been chosen to impersonate was supposed to be a low sort of fellow who did not scruple to read all the documents, private and personal, that passed through his hands, nor to reveal the contents. On this occasion it was his infamous business to read these letters aloud, sotto voce but quite audibly, without omitting to call the names of the ladies and gentlemen present to whom they were addressed. One example must suffice as being more or less typical of all. This note, written in a Spencerian hand by one of the scribes employed by the conspirators, was addressed to Miss Natalie Venable and read as follows: The foreigner here alluded to was Jim Woods of Pantops, a Master of Arts of the University, who was going to China as a medical missionary and had some hopes of taking Miss Natalie with him on that expedition; and indeed it was not altogether a bad idea, considering all the mischief she was doing here at home. "Drum" Fletcher was John Drummond Fletcher or "Little Flick," as we used to call him because he was not much taller than the top of Miss Natalie's shoulder. He was a dandy fellow who came from Accomac or somewhere on the Eastern Shore, and at that time he was Jim Woods's deadly rival.

I do not remember the wording of the note that was sent to Raleigh Minor, but I know it was not in verse but in sober prose and made him furious. At that period of his existence he seldom missed spending an evening downtown on Park Street in speechless adoration of Martha Southall. The message he got purported to be from her dignified father and stated succinctly that owing to the steadily increasing throng of visitors that came to see his

daughters, he had been put to considerable expense for keeping the front gate of the yard in repair, just recently having had to get new hinges and a new latch also. Consequently, he begged to notify all concerned, and Raleigh in particular, that he had installed a turnstile with a nickel-in-the-slot machine which he hoped would be found to pay for itself.

Now as all these revelations proceeded to be divulged without the slightest regard for the laws of civilized society, the temper of the company, instead of getting gayer and gayer, got glummer and glummer. Every new victim waited with mingled terror and indignation for his or her turn to come, and everybody glared at the postmaster with hatred, as if lynching would be too good for him if he got what he deserved. Under the circumstances I was beginning to feel a good deal of concern, and I must confess I stumbled over my lines. The ticking of the grandfather's clock at the foot of the stairs was plainly louder and louder; but the greatest uneasiness of all came at the moment when, happening to glance behind me, I was just in time to perceive Martha Bagby, the cynosure of every eye, disappearing upstairs around the curve in the bannisters. When the game started, she had been sitting on the bottom step, keen with excitement, and prepared to prompt me if I made a mistake. Heaven knows I was in need of tier help, though I never could catch tier whisper, it was confused with so much giggling. Yet withal she was a lady of singular discernment, and when she sensed the way the wind was blowing or even when she saw that there was not any breeze at all and the atmosphere was stagnant as it was that evening, she could take to her heels as fist as any minx and leave me to perish all alone in my guilt. The simple fact was that amid the deathlike silence that greeted each letter as it was read aloud, Miss Martha had deliberately mounted one step higher on the winding stairway until at last she vanished out of sight. Then whatever courage I had left ebbed out as gas oozes from a pricked balloon. A heap of unread letters was still before me when, in a quavering voice, I announced that the game was ended; a minute later I

was standing with my back to the fire in the little cloakroom that was ordinarily Dr. Dabney's office. It was full of indignant gentlemen who would have naught to do with me. Raleigh Minor curled his lip, "Little Flick" averted his face, and nobody ever would have dreamed that Jim Woods over there in the corner, with that angry scowl on his countenance, was about to carry the blessed gospel to the benighted heathen! Luckily, I did not suffer bodily injury, much as I longed to inflict it on everybody present, but it was many days before I got absolution and forgiveness.

It bid fair to be a dismal ending of what had started out to be a gay party, but then refreshments were served, mighty good refreshments that were efficacious for dispersing spleen and all uncharitableness. Martha Bagby descended once more into the arena, and when she told the guests goodnight, everybody said how sweet and charming she was, and nobody was to blame but me. Then she set to work to heal my wounds and told me I had been simply wonderful, while everybody else was stupid, and of course I believed her, for under the soft touch of woman man is as putty.

Everybody knows of course that the head and arms are both missing from the figure of the Winged Victory (Niké de Samothrace) in the Louvre, and therefore it is no wonder that the student from the University of Texas, seeing this beautiful statue for the first time, and being told its name, exclaimed, "God help Defeat!" When Martha Bagby told me I had covered myself with glory in the game of "post office," I wondered how it must feel to be covered with shame.

It was in the spring of 1889, when I still lived on Monroe Hill, that Murray Mason McGuire (1872-1945), younger son of my revered teacher, came to the University with a baseball team from Richmond and tarried there several days as my guest. Young as he was at that time, his fame as a pitcher and wizard for "down-shoots" and puzzling curves had gone abroad already,

and we did not scruple to persuade him to leave his father's school and matriculate as a student in the University before the end of the session so as to be eligible to play on our baseball team in the season that was just then beginning. That was the start of his celebrated career, although the next session (1889-90) was really his first year in college. The DKE's were jubilant, none more than myself, over having prevailed on Murray McGuire to cast in his lot with our tribe.

Before the end of the calendar year of 1889, the first number of the weekly newspaper called College Topics made its appearance under the joint editorship of Hunt Chipley and Legh Page; and by the end of the session (1889-90) Breckinridge Robertson had been appointed editor-in-chief with "Kit" (Adam C.) Carson as assistant editor. Breckinridge was now forging ahead in prominence and was soon to become, especially during the next three or four years, one of the foremost students in college. In 1893 he and Carson were sworn political foes.

Certainly in the 1880's and all during the time I was in college, hardly any honour to be obtained by a student was considered to be greater than an invitation to join the famous society of Eli Banana, as indeed I daresay is still the case. Eli Banana was not so much an order of merit as it was a badge of distinction, coveted by all but obtained by few. The Eli's were known to be jolly good fellows who, whether or not they had come to college on purpose to have a good time, certainly seemed to all the rest of us to have achieved that purpose. Yet among them there was a goodly sprinkling of members such, for instance, as Hampden Bagby and Archer Anderson, who were not just dashing leaders of society, perhaps addicted also to going on sprees, but who ranked at the top in all intellectual pursuits and might even be models of sobriety.

Allen Potts, noted athlete, destined to marry Gertrude Rives, was an Eli who, as far as I know, never touched a drop of liquor all the time he was in college. Yet on the festive day of initiation of new recruits, when the big drum sounded loud and long and

the Eli's paraded up and down the Lawn, and indeed from one end of the campus to the other, singing and carousing from twilight to dawn, it was Allen Potts who led the procession and was to all appearance the noisiest and drunkest of them all. On one such night a little before dawn, they arrived in front of my room on Monroe Hill, a picked gang of which Allen Potts was the ringleader. Solitary and alone inside, I trembled, not in my boots, but in my bed,,. as I heard the shouting and the shooting just under the lintel of the door; hoping, yet scarcely expecting, that the latch might prove strong enough to hold fast against the impending assault. Locks and bolts were as naught to Allen Potts when he was on a "dry drunk," and to him it was the simplest process on earth to hurl a shower of beer bottles against the door itself until he broke a panel and could pull it loose. If his sportive humour had ended there, I might have been thankful enough, but when the empty bottles came hurtling through the air into the room itself and burst in fragments all about my head, it was indeed a critical moment, un mauvais quart d'heure. A clothes-bag slung over his shoulder was laden with missiles, an entire panel had been ripped from the door, and there I lay in bed completely at the mercy of this lunatic. All I could do was to pull the mattress up over my head and crouch under it until the ammunition was spent and the bombardment ceased. It mattered little how angry and indignant I may have been afterwards. Allen Potts was a good fellow, but not a good playfellow. I liked him and shunned him, just as one might feel towards a wildcat that was disposed to be friendly.

It was during the earlier half of this same session, not long before Christmas I believe, that the TILKA society was founded as a kind of rival of Eli Banana, perhaps originally intended to be on a little higher plane. The charter members included the following prominent students in college: Hunt Chipley, Joe Dunn, E. E. Garrett, Edwin Gibson, J. Leighton Hubard, W. H. Thompson Loyall, Joseph McElroy, Raleigh Minor, Sidney M. Neely, Sherrard Tabb, Robert Tunstall Taylor, Walter H. Taylor,

A. Lee Thurman, Robert F. Williams, and James B. Woods, perhaps also one or two others. The first "goats" to be initiated were Tom Pinckney and myself. The cherub-face of Thomas Pinckney, of Charleston, South Carolina, rises before me now as I write his name and remember how I loved him once. He had a cherub's face indeed, dear and sweet to behold; yet were it kindled with anger, verity I believe Richard the Lionhearted might have quailed before it! Torn Pinckney was short in stature, a little fellow, thorough-bred as an Arabian pony, gentle as a dove, and stout as steel.

That session Raleigh Minor was elected final president of the Jefferson Literary Society, without opposition, and the DKE's were all elated. As alumni orator at The Finals, Mr. Lawrence Marye delivered a long and scholarly address, which was dull and tedious to me and perhaps to others also, for on such occasions the audience was easily bored and not always courteous. Among the graduates who were distinguished that year were: Joseph B. Dunn, Halstead S. Hedges, James B. Lovett, and Walter F. Taylor, each of whom got the degree of M. A.; Otto G. Ramsay, William M. Randolph, and James B. Woods, all three of whom graduated in Medicine; and P. H. C. Cabell, Charles F. Fenner, John D. Fletcher, Felix H. Levy, H. Dent Minor, John B. Minor, Jr., Raleigh C. Minor, Jefferson Davis Norris, Edward W. Robertson, Minton W. Talbot, and John Wilson, who all got their hard-earned B. L.'s. The above list from memory is far from complete, but I hope it is accurate as far as it goes.

Nobody could have been more inconspicuous than I was at The Finals of 1890, and what I remember best about it now, indeed almost the only thing I can recall, is that it was the time when Annie Doggett came from Richmond and was the guest of Nannie Minor. Now she was a mighty pretty maiden, and, consequently, I took her around the nine-mile circuit as many times as I could persuade the keeper of the livery stable to let me have a horse and buggy for the purpose; yet it was all in vain!

Another chap, whom I cannot forgive to this day, took her around the twelve-mile circuit and cut me out entirely! She had too many strings to her bow or too many beaux on her string — you see even now I am tongue-tied and cannot tell exactly how it was. Cardinal Wolsey charged Cromwell to fling away ambition; so when Mr. A. D. Payne sent me the livery-stable bill, I flung it out the window, and no doubt lost pretty Annie Doggett at the same time.

Truth to say, at the end of the session of 1889-90, not everything was as I might have wished and hoped; yet, notwithstanding, my second session in the University of Virginia had been a good and joyful year for me, the best of all that had gone before, annus mirabilis. That year I had peeped into the realm of science, my lips had touched the fruit of a new tree of knowledge, and I had found that it was sweet to my taste. Now the session had ended, the campus was deserted, and Annie Doggett had returned in triumph to Richmond. I stood alone on the Lawn, it was night, and the stars were overhead, I asked myself the question, Dic cur hic? and could get no answer.