V INTERLUDE: BACK IN RICHMOND 1890-1891 In the days of my youth when I was a student in the University of
Virginia, 1888-1893. | ||
V
INTERLUDE: BACK IN RICHMOND
1890-1891
Incerti quo fata ferant. Virgil, Aeneid, III 7.
MEANWHILE DURING MY LONG ABSENCE FROM HOME which had now lasted two years, my father's health never robust even in early life, was beginning to fade more and more, insomuch that along about 1890 he felt obliged to relinquish his somewhat provisional and perhaps not entirely congenial task as editor of the Central Presbyterian. That was a weekly newspaper of considerable renown in those days and a leading organ of religious opinion particularly throughout the South. He had undertaken it in the beginning chiefly as a means of livelihood, and now it had become too onerous to be borne longer. So it came to pass that ere I had finished my second session in the University of Virginia, our home in Richmond was abandoned, and my father, mother, and sister moved to Norfolk to live, where they had many family ties. Thereafter, I used to go to see them in Norfolk fairly regularly from time to time certainly as often as twice every year as long as my fattier lived and indeed until I myself got married in 1899 and had ceased to live in Virginia. His end came in September, 1897, a few months before he would have reached the allotted span of three-score years and ten. My mother and sister continued to live in Norfolk many years afterwards, until, alas, each of them died also, first my mother in 1919 and then Evelyn in 1924. The three graves
My father's retirement from active employment entailed a serious reduction of his income, and I foresaw that it might no longer be possible for him to afford to send me to college in order to finish my education. True, my expenses were comparatively small, for as a native of the state of Virginia I was exempt from tuition as long as I continued in the academic department of the University; besides, the Thompson Brown Scholarship contributed nearly as much as a hundred dollars towards defraying the actual cost of living, which was mighty little then as compared with now.* Nevertheless, I was resolved that I must not be a burden on my father any longer, even if I had to go to work to earn my living.
While I was at a loss what to do under the circumstances, luckily enough, I was offered a post as teacher in my old school in Richmond at a salary of something like $700, as well as I recollect, together with my board and lodgings in Mr. McGuire's home. My father advised me to take it, not so much for the sake of relieving him at a time when he needed relief, as because he believed a year spent in reaching would be a useful experience and would at the same time afford leisure for making up my mind as to what was to be my real vocation in life. While I certainly did not have the slightest inclination to study either Law or Medicine, perhaps I cherished a vague and silly notion of being a writer and making a living by my pen. Divining my secret ambition, my father ridiculed and discouraged it from the outset. "A writer," said he, "must have something to write about. Literature simply
Even as late as 1898, when I was a fellow of the Johns Hopkins University, it cost only ten dollars a month to rent a large and comfortable furnished room at 416 Hoffman Street in Baltimore, fuel and all included (everything except kerosene oil for a student's lamp and towels for the washstand); and I got three meals a day, the best I ever had in my life, at Mrs. Snowden's fashionable boardinghouse near by on Eutaw Street, for which I paid $3.50 a week.
The venerable, if somewhat decayed, old mansion on Gamble's Hill where I had gone to school had been pulled down about that time, and, . consequently, Mr. McGuire had had to find new quarters for his establishment. The school now was located farther uptown on the second floor of a spacious new building that had been erected at the northeast corner of Main and Belvidere streets. The ground floor was taken up by a row of shops fronting on Main Street. The residence of the schoolmaster's family was close by in a two-storey house on Belvidere Street, a thoroughfare which skirted Monroe Park and was a right of way of 'the R. F. & P. Railroad from Elba Station near what was then the end of Broad Street and led through the tunnel beneath Gamble's Hill to the downtown terminus on Byrd Street by the river.
In the days when I was a student at Richmond College, Patrick Henry Cary Cabell, originally from Nelson County if I am not mistaken, had been Mr. McGuire's right-hand man and chief assistant. Having just graduated in Law at the University, he was back again at his old job; only not quite on the same footing as before, for while he lived in Mr. McGuire's home and continued to teach the higher classes in Latin and perhaps a class in Greek also, his main occupation was the practice of his new profession, and so he spent the greater part of each day in his office downtown. In fact, I saw little of him that whole session, yet enough to perceive that he was a man of unusual ability, fond of society and possibly inclined to be a little too convivial for his own good. In the upper school that year besides myself, the other new teacher was Charles Massie, who I believe was a
So it happened, quite early in the session, that late one night long after Massie was in bed and fast asleep, Cabell came home in a hilarious mood and roused Massie by singing one of the Eli songs at the top of his lungs. What it lacked in tune was made up in volume. When Massie tried to reason with him and implored him not to disturb the whole household, Cabell consented to keep quiet on condition that Massie, lying in bed opposite the couch on which he was sitting, would hold a glass mug for him while he poured out one last dram from the nearly empty demijohn that he had brought home with him. Massie stretched out his arm and took the glass, while Cabell, tilting the bottle over his shoulder, tried to pour the liquor into it; but his hand was unsteady, and some of the contents spilled on the floor. Now at this critical moment when they were thus engaged, a faint sound was heard in the hall outside; an interloper was fumbling in the dark for the latch on the door. They paused to listen, and now they could recognise Mr. McGuire's voice, as if he were alone and talking to himself in some perplexity. The truth was that the "boss," roused from sleep, had got out of bed in his nightshirt
When Massie told me the story at recess next day, he was haggard still, for he declared he never got another wink of sleep that whole night long. Mr. McGuire never alluded to the midnight disturbance, and the whole household maintained a discreet silence, although I believe Cabell kept Massie on tenterhooks by threatening to make a clean breast of it. Yet everybody knew that Massie was as innocent as a lamb.
From the time when I was a lad not more than twelve years old, I had known all the members of the McGuire household
Clara McGuire, her father's only daughter, was a strikingly handsome girl, as I remember her, dignified and aloof, who regarded Massie and me with polite and unfeigned indifference. In some strange way the picture of Lucinda Roanoke in Anthony Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds rises before me as I try to recall Clara McGuire's appearance and manner; yet I do not believe there was any resemblance. She was plainly a great favourite of her grandmother who lived in the house also. That venerable and accomplished old lady was the widow of Rev. John Peyton McGuire who had been the principal of the Episcopal High School when the Yankees occupied Alexandria at the outbreak of the Civil War, and although I did not know it at the time, she was the author of The Diary of a Refugee, the graphic narrative of one who had herself been a participant and eyewitness of the tribulations of the people of Virginia during that desperate struggle. The opportunity of conversing with her was a privilege which I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated whenever it was vouchsafed. Another inmate of the household was a red-headed young woman who I believe was Mrs. McGuire's niece named Susie Morris and who was her aunt's sole and faithful assistant in the conduct of the school for little boys. Massie soon ingratiated himself with every member of the family and was a great favourite. Cabell may have been on
Domestically speaking, the McGuire ménage was pretty much left to run itself with the help of a couple of rather inefficient and slovenly servants. Indeed nobody seemed to give a thought to housekeeping, least of all Mrs. McGuire herself who certainly had all she could do to teach school from morning to night. Clara may have attended to it after a fashion, and perhaps it was her job; but then, although I did not know it at the time, she was engaged to be married, and was indeed actually wedded to a young clergyman ere the end of the session. Altogether the various individuals that made up the household were a group of earnest and worthy folks, young and old alike, each intent on the school in one way or another, morning, afternoon, and night; it was a solid phalanx, orderly and well-drilled, whose slogan might have been like that of the three musketeers, "All for one, and one for all!" On Sunday everybody with one accord, save only Cabell and me, attended St. James Church whose beloved rector was the Reverend Dr. Joshua Peterkin; in fact, not on Sunday only but on all other days as well, it might be said with truth, not even the vaunted crew of H.M.S. Pinafore were ever more "attentive to their duty" and more bent on doing their appointed tasks than Mr. McGuire and all his satellites and dependents.
Now it is not without a certain sense of shame that I feel bound to say that I cannot include myself in this goodly company, for honourable as I might have been in some respects, it
In my spare time I had laid out quite an elaborate programme of Selbst-studium, as it is called in German, which included,
One of the recent innovations in the school was a special new class in elementary science, chiefly chemistry in the mildest possible form. Having sat at the feet of "Frank Smith" and "Jack Mallet" in the University of Virginia, and being indeed, so to speak, fresh from those fountains of wisdom, I was commissioned to have charge of the new enterprise. A considerable outlay of money had been expended in the way of buying an assortment of apparatus consisting mainly of test tubes, flasks, funnels, retorts, Bunsen burners, rubber tubing, corks, files, filter paper, sulphuric, hydrochloric, and nitric acid, etc.; and a separate room equipped with the necessary plumbing fixtures, together with a cabinet and demonstration table, was set apart for the purpose of instruction. The textbook I selected was Remsen's Briefer Course, as I believe it was called (but I am not certain), which had a companion volume or laboratory manual designed for the use of uninitiated teachers such as I certainly was at that time. The directions were clear and minute down to the smallest detail of manipulation, and I entered on the task with eager enthusiasm, even hoping I might emulate Dr. Mallet in some slight degree. At the end of the first fortnight I had gained so much confidence that I was prepared to generate hydrogen gas and collect it in a flask in full view of the class of boys looking on in breathless expectation. Now as everybody knows, this
It was on that occasion that I first became aware of the presence in class of a pupil by the name of Harry Langhorne, as droll and delightful a chap as I ever knew. He was a younger brother of that glorious Irene then just about to blossom forth in all her girlhood beauty, Harry had been one of the first to emerge from under the benches, and now he was wiping the acid off the table with a towel. Not having lost my wits entirely, I warned him to be careful not to get that stuff on his fingers, and to be sure to rinse the towel under the hydrant. As he hung the cloth on the rack, he looked at me out of the corner of his eye and drawled in his inimitable way, "It was a pretty close call you had from that stopper! Would you like me to get on a chair and dig it out from the ceiling, so you can have it for a keepsake?" I looked him straight in the eye. "You are right, Harry," I said, "it was a close call, but I am sure neither you nor I would ever mind being a martyr for the sake of science." "No," he replied, after a moment's silence, "I wouldn't mind being a martyr of science, but I believe I would mind busting on an experiment!" Then he dodged the lick I aimed at him, but from that day we were fast friends. Measured by years, Harry Langhorne's life was a short one, but as long as he lived he bubbled over with wit and humour, as kindly and homely as the mirth of Will Rogers, and I believe he lives still in the memory of all who ever came in contact with him, just as he lives now in my own recollections.
Among the schoolboys I had many other favourites besides Harry Langhorne and the two Nelson boys, none of them very far below my own age; but the only names I can recall at the moment are those of Jonathan Bryan, Gessner Harrison, Cotesworth Pinckney, "Fat-eye" Powers, Morgan Robinson, Carter Wormeley, and little Jack Page, the merriest of them all, who is now the farnous Dr. John Randolph Page of New York City,
What gave me most pleasure of all was that Raleigh Minor spent that year 1890-91 in Richmond also, for he began to practise law there in partnership with Edwin B. Thomasson, an Englishman by birth who in his college days had been an ardent beau of Mary Southall. While the legal ability of that short-lived firm was conspicuous enough, clients were only too conspicuous by their absence, and the office was a happy loafing place for me and others of the same kind who were not dependent on patronage and were without a cent in the world. Scarcely a day ever went by all winter long without my meeting Raleigh either downtown in his dolce far niente workshop or uptown in my own sequestered cloister. Many an evening we had supper together in some shabby little restaurant or other, where each of us devoured a pile of hot waffles plastered over with butter and molasses and drank a bottle of beer to wash it down; for we never pretended to be epicures, and appeasement of hunger was an end in itself. No doubt those Gargantuan meals sowed the seed of the woeful dyspepsia that plagued my life until in the fulness of time at last I got married and by God's mercy was blessed with a wife who, besides all her other charms and accomplishments, had the art also of making waffles that were at once the best in the world and the least deleterious.
After supper, as likely as not, Raleigh would accompany me to my lodgings, and there, having found a good book, we would take turns in reading aloud with long intermissions for criticism and discussion, until the clock on the mantelpiece pointed to midnight. Then Raleigh would get up to go home, or sometimes I prevailed upon him to share my double bed and tarry until morning. In the course of the long winter I know we read nearly all the plays of Shakespeare and many other masterpieces of the great English writers, mainly poetry or fiction, commenting on
In the spring of 1891, the great actor Joe Jefferson came to town for a short engagement at the Richmond Theatre, and for weeks in advance everybody had been looking forward to this big event. The Rivals was the play of all others in his répertoire that Raleigh and I longed to see, but the price of admission. was high for those days, and alas! both our purses were empty, as was generally the case. I am afraid, by that time our credit in Richmond was none too good either. At any rate, we had a meeting expressly for the purpose of considering what was best to be done under the circumstances. It was voted without a dissenting voice, yet not . without much reluctance, that there was really but one thing to do, and that was to stay at home that evening and read The Rivals aloud to each other. In my room where we sat down together to carry out this resolution, each with a copy of the play open in his hands before him, we were too much off the beaten track to hear the carriages roll past on their way to the theatre; yet incredulous as it may be, the simple truth is that my friend and I had a good time all by ourselves that evening. You see there were Romans who lived as late as "the gay nineties."
All during that pleasant nine months I spent in Richmond amid the old associations of my boyhood, Raleigh Minor was a friend in need and a tower of strength; but the chief delight and best solace of all was a sweetheart who lived not far from Gamble's Hill and whom I used to see, rain or shine, as often as was permitted. "Her bright smile haunts me still" just as if I saw her now once more in all her simple charm and grace, "too dear for my possessing!"
It was a year of growth for me in many ways, and I marvel at the amount of solid and useful reading I accomplished in that period. I have mentioned already that my room at Miss McRae's was just around the corner from the schoolhouse. As I passed the door of the grocery on my way thither one cold, winter day, a
And so I was; it was ignominious but true. I knew I. would certainly be quarantined for a week at least. 'Luckily, however, good Miss McRae could bring me my meals and agreed to do so on the spot; and mighty good meals they turned out to be, cooked by her own hands and served just. as daintily as if they had been meant for the Prince of Wales. Telephones had not then been invented, but I despatched notes all over town, first of all to Mr. McGuire, then to dear Sallie Randolph, and to Raleigh Minor, indeed to everybody of high or low degree in the town of Richmond who might be expected to sympathize with me in my stricken and benighted condition.
Now it so happened that the day before I came down with the mumps, namely, February 10, 1891 (for that is the date inscribed in a book lying open here on the desk before me), I had been downtown browsing about in West & Johnston's Bookshop
"O evening sun of July," that memorable midsummer day in 1789 when the Bastille fell; and that other evening early in October when the Oeil-de-Bauf rallied round Marie Antoinette, "fairest unhappy Queen of Hearts," and the band struck up, O Richard, O mon Roi, l'univers t'abandonne! — shall I ever live to forget that blissful interval in the days of my youth when, confined indoors by the mumps, I sat by the fire all day long and read such passages as those in Carlyle's French Revolution?
It may not have been history "according to Hoyle" or according to Clio, sternest of all the muses; yet what other artist has ever painted such vivid historical canvasses as are to be found in the writings of Thomas Carlyle? I could not rest satisfied until I had purchased the whole of his works, some forty volumes or more, all in the same uniform edition bound in red cloth, and there the volumes are now all on one long shelf of my bookcase. Old notebooks which I kept once are filled with long excerpts copied from those precious volumes, and I run across them still, and take delight in them still.
Yet now I shun those books which once I perused so eagerly. Carlyle was surely a great magician with words and was a prophet once, but now his style grates on me. He has not changed in all these years, but I have changed, and that is something sad to acknowledge.
Many little incidents enlivened those days I spent in Richmond, yet now I suppose they are scarcely worth recording. However, I may tell one anecdote simply to show that I was a gullible young man, perhaps not even as wise as Moses, the Vicar of Wakefield's son, who came home from the fair with a gross of green spectacles that he had taken in exchange for his father's old colt.
Going for a walk one midwinter afternoon, soon after school
It got to be late in the afternoon, and the company dispersed about dark. That evening Raleigh and I had supper together at some little tavern or other on Broad Street, and there he told me a secret. The long and the short of it was that Dick Thompson had done Raleigh a great favour and persuaded one of his associates, in fact one of the top men in the syndicate, to let Raleigh in on the Tiger Mine at the original rock-bottom price of ten cents a share. The man higher up was a particular friend of Dick's, and besides he liked what he had heard about Raleigh. While he
However, next day about noon there came a knock on the door of my classroom in school, and a messenger entered and handed me a note from Raleigh. Could I come to his office immediately on business that brooked no delay? — so the note read. I went straight to Mr. McGuire and got him to excuse me from duty for the rest of that day, and in less than a half-hour I was in my friend's office downtown. It was on the upper floor of the building which was occupied downstairs by the banking house of John L. Williams & Son; or was the name of the firm then Lancaster & Williams? Raleigh was expecting me, and as I entered the room, he waved before my eyes a certificate for 500 shares of Arizona Tiger Silver Mine Stock made out in my name. I was so breathless with excitement that I could hardly listen to the explanation, but the gist of it was that he had seen Dick Thompson again soon after breakfast and by dint of much persuasion got him to consent to give me a bite of El Dorado also.
I clasped Raleigh to my heart, but he said there was no time for that because the next thing to be done was to raise the fifty dollars that must be paid for the certificate before the bank closed that day. My first thought was to apply to Mr. McGuire to let me have that amount on my salary, but that plan involved going all the way back uptown, and then it might be too late. Besides, it was doubtful whether Mr. McGuire himself would have that much cash on hand to give me on the spur of the moment. A better plan, Raleigh thought, would be to go downstairs
What became of the El Dorado in Arizona, I never really have known from that day to this. The stock-certificate was endorsed and placed in Raleigh's hands for safe keeping, and I never again laid eyes on it. Some four of five years afterwards when I was a teacher in the Miller Manual Training School of Albemarle, Raleigh wrote to ask me to join him and Heath Dabney at the annual meeting of the Virginia State Bar Association, which was held that year in the old Homestead Hotel at the Hot Springs. It was a lark for all of us and we had a jolly time together, moving in high society and living on the fat of the land for a few days. When I went to pay my hotel bill, the clerk informed
And a place for gold which they refine;
The exploitation of the silver mine in Arizona long antedated the rush for gold in the Klondike in 1897, for the former was nearly contemporary with the peak of that disasterous land boom in Virginia when "towns on paper" sprang up like mushrooms overnight from one end of the state to the other. Their brand-new hotels and ready-made factories were the mute and empty monuments which were all that was left to tell the tale when the financial panic of 1893 spread like wildfire all over the land. Young and inexperienced as I was, with scarcely ever as much as two silver dollars in my pocket to rub together, it is not to be supposed, simply because I had the hardihood to speculate in a silver mine, that I was a victim of the prevalent fever and, like nearly everybody else in those days, dreamed of "getting rich quick." On the contrary, while I know I was vain
I was still as far as ever from choosing a vocation (if indeed one can ever be said to choose a calling); yet I knew that sooner or later, the sooner the better, I must needs come to grips with that problem and reach a decision. For one thing I was painfully aware of my ignorance of both French and German, and was gradually beginning to realize that in case I did intend to pursue science and philosophy, it behooved me to acquire a decent familiarity with those two foreign languages, even though I might never learn to converse freely in any but my native tongue, This desideratum in my education was sufficient reason in itself to enable me to make up my mind to return to the University of Virginia for at least one more year.
It is well known that there is no better way of learning a subject than by having to teach it to others. I believe it is true likewise that in order to be a really good and capable teacher, the master himself should be far ahead of his pupils. I was conscious of my own shortcomings on this score and of lack of depth in languages, mathematics, and science, the subjects I tried to reach that year in McGuire's School. It was quite plain to me that much of my effort was wasted entirely, for not even a good teacher can force "the young idea to shoot" if the pupil in question, through no fault of his own, has no organ of sensitivity and cannot be stimulated by knowledge for which he has not the slightest taste. Why, I said to myself, why does Mr. McGuire spread his dish of Latin before Harry Langhorne (to take just one example), when it is plain that every mouthful is unpalatable to that delightful and ingenuous youth, and that no coaxing will ever make him swallow it? Let Cicero denounce Catiline with ever so much fervour and eloquence, Harry Langhorne will never take sides with either of the two, keen as
The truth is that all that year my mind was lying fallow in the freshness of youth when the intellect is as vigourous as its conclusions are rash, for then it has not been mellowed by experience nor been informed by. experiment, the foundation stories of all knowledge that is not based simply on intuition. Certainly at this stage of my existence my reflections were not profound or very coherent; yet I believe they were earnest and sincere and perhaps riot all in vain. For instance, I was desirous of finding out what Emerson meant when he said that there was "law for man, and law for thing," for in the course of my reading I had come across that line in one of his poems, and though I could not fathom the sense, I believed I had a glimmering of the truth hidden in it. As I have already said, those were the days when much was being talked and written about the "conflict" between religion and science, and certainly I was unable to reconcile two such powerful antagonists. Yet in this world, I asked myself, are we riot bound to take much on faith that cannot be proved at all? If a man knows that the law of gravitation is true, of course he believes in that law; but surely that is not what is meant by faith as it is defined, for example, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and is indeed the very opposite of faith. If, as Emerson seemed to say, there is "a law for man" and another "law for thing," then I argued perhaps in reality there
If I have cited this one instance of my childish meditations, which I happen to remember now, it is not because I attach any particular importance to it, but because I wish to have an excuse for calling attention to an exceedingly timely and thoughtful essay entitled "The humanities in peace and war" which was published originally in the Classical Journal for January, 1944. Curiously enough, the author, Dr. J. Duncan Spaeth, professor emeritus of English in Princeton University, begins his article by quoting the whole of Emerson's verse:
Not reconciled,
Law for man, and law for thing;
The one builds town and fleet,
But it runs wild,
And doth the man unking;
"Science is organized knowledge of the 'law for thing.' Efficiency results from the use of this knowledge. The humanities teach insight into the 'law for man.' Enrichment of life and enlargement of spirit are the fruits of this insight. Science advances by experiment; the humanities build on experience. Science through controlled experiment creates the knowledge that is power; the humanities through controlled experience create the power that is character. They enrich the individual by the experience of the race. This enrichment of personality by vicarious experience we name culture, and the arts that foster it we name liberal....
"The humanities look backward, the physical sciences look
I cannot refrain from quoting several more lines from this remarkable essay, inasmuch as this last excerpt is particularly significant in the anxious days in which we are now living:
"In war, especially a mechanized war, the 'law for thing' demands priority. But the threat of war to the world of spirit is that it tends to make temporary priorities permanent. Yet the defenders of the ramparts of the spirit know that the power of the ideal outlasts the ideal of power, that 'faith is an anvil that has outworn many hammers,'* that the prophets and seers and poets, the captains and leaders in the armies of the spirit, have access to sources of power beyond the reach of the organizers of force, and survive the latter."
However, during the interlude in the days of my youth when my studies at the University of Virginia had been interrupted for one year, not all my thoughts, by any means, were concentrated on deep philosophic questions which at that time I was certainly not mature enough to tackle, much less to grasp; nor indeed was all my spare time spent in reading the masterpieces of English literature, as possibly might be inferred from the memoirs I have related thus far. With the advent of spring "'a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love," and it was so with me in the spring of 1891.
The dance gaed thro' the lighted ha',
To thee my fancy took its wing,
I sat, but neither heard not saw;
Tho' this was fair and that was braw,
And yon the toast of a' the town,
I sighed and said amang them a',
Ye are na Mary Morison.
Upon the dull earth dwelling.
Everybody knows how lovable Bishop Randolph was all the days of his life, and when he lived in Richmond, he was in his prime. His family was indeed a delightful and charming household, to cacti of whom I was attached by a youthful admiration and devotion that neither separation nor lapse of years has diminished.
Not long after my dear friend Nannie Minor had returned home from the visit she paid Annie Doggett in Richmond in February, 1891, she wrote to my sweetheart, Sallie Randolph, and invited her to be her guest for the University of Virginia Finals in June. Nobody rejoiced more than I did when the invitation was accepted, for as far as it was in my power, I was determined to make Sallie Randolph's début at the University as signal a triumph as a girl ever had in this world. For her and me that spring was a time of eager expectation of the pleasure that was in store for us at the end of the session, However, the few weeks that remained before I left Richmond had to be devoted mainly to my duties in school.
My earthly possessions and impedimenta in the way of furniture and luggage were certainly not enough to give me much
came home from school. I had been busy all morning holding a final examination in Geometry, and I had under my arm a heap of papers that had to be graded as soon as possible. However, I decided to pack the books first and be done with it. The task was soon finished, but it was a tight squeeze to get all the books in the box, big and capacious as it certainly was. At last when I nailed the top fast, I was thankful to be rid of a job that had been weighing on my mind for some days. The huge obstacle in the middle of the floor was much in the way, but in spite of all I could do to push it a little to one side, it was too heavy and would not move an inch, I wondered how I had been such a fool as not to have put the empty case in a more convenient place, but the thing was done, and there the box would have to stay until day after tomorrow when I planned to leave town.
Mrs. McGuire told me about a respectable old coloured man who had a horse and wagon and was just the fellow I needed for hauling the box of books to the freight depot of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad on lower Broad Street, quite a long way, considerably more than a mile, from my lodgings on upper Main Street. He came to see me and we both agreed that he would have to bring another man to help him with the job.
The morning of my last day in Richmond was a busy time, for I had many errands to do and two or three farewell visits to make, besides looking after my luggage and getting to the station in time to take the afternoon train for Charlottesville. Immediately after breakfast, the last thing I did before leaving the house was to remind my landlady again that the old coloured man would be there around noon to get the box of books in accordance with his instructions. My train was due to leave about three o'clock, and knowing that I had to go first to the freight office and buy my ticket afterwards, I supposed that I would be allowing ample time if I got back to my apartment by one o'clock, simply in order to pick up my bags and say goodbye to Miss McRae.
That excellent lady was waiting for me in the doorway when I returned, and tears were streaming from her eyes, but not because she was sad to think that she might never see me again. She sobbed as if her heart would break, because, she said, her house was "a total wreck," no other word could describe it. The old coloured man and his horse and wagon, each as rickety as could be, had pulled up before the front gate at the appointed hour, and she had conducted him and another infirm individual upstairs to my room. There by dint of prodigious efforts, by twisting first one way and then the other, little by little they had shifted the huge unwieldy burden to the top of the staircase, and there the box and everything in it, as if suddenly animated, had wrenched loose from the two feeble old men and tumbled headlong down the steps from top to bottom! As far as words went, that was the end of the story; in testimony whereof Miss McRae simply pointed to the havoc that had been wrought. The evidence was eloquent enough, but I must not pause to describe it. The steps leading from porch to pavement were almost as badly mutilated as the inside staircase, Had it not been for the help of a passer-by oil the street, the two old coloured men could never have succeeded in lifting the box on to the wagon.
Of course, I was overwhelmed with mortification and sympathy,
However, when in due course the books arrived in Charlottesville by freight, nearly as much trouble was encountered all over again hauling them from the depot there to my room on the Lawn, but I have dwelt too long on this episode already. It was an expensive lesson, as the lessons of experience are wont to be. Many years afterwards when I lived in Geneva, New York, and
It was near the end of June, 1891, and The Finals of the University of Virginia were in full swing, even if the baccalaureate sermon had not yet been preached. Sallie Randolph had come from Richmond, gay as a lark with all her new frocks and sashes, and beaux flocked to see her at the Minors' where she was staying. One of the early events of the gay season was an amateur play, "Charley's Aunt," I believe it was, which was given in the Townhall in Charlottesville, and I took Sallie Randolph to see it. The play was gotten up by Tom Dabney, who had been teaching school that year at McCabe's in Petersburg, and it was thought to be a great scandal, not to say outrage, that the female parts were taken by boys clad in womanly garments, which indeed were lavish in those days and nearly always included bustles. Colonel Venable fumed and swore that no daughter of his should ever witness such a degrading spectacle. All I know is that Sallie Randolph and I sat through the play and enjoyed it for what it was worth; as for me, I would have enjoyed a Punch and Judy show just as much if only I were by her side.
Then one day when she was at the zenith of her fame, Sallie Randolph stayed indoors, and word went round that she had been taken ill. I never saw her again, or said farewell. It was
Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
V INTERLUDE: BACK IN RICHMOND 1890-1891 In the days of my youth when I was a student in the University of
Virginia, 1888-1893. | ||