University of Virginia Library

V
INTERLUDE: BACK IN RICHMOND
1890-1891

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

lie side by side in Elmwood Cemetery in old Norfolk, and now of all that once happy household, for more than a score of years I have been the sole survivor.

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

for its own sake is a poor business. A man who is just a writer, and nothing more, is close to being a trifler." The upshot of it all was that for the present at least I was glad to take advantage of the opportunity that had conic to me, and accordingly, early in the autumn of 1890, I went to Richmond to enter upon my new employment.

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

son of Mr. Rodes Massie, a lovable fellow, very modest, yet diligent and capable withal. He and I got to be very friendly without being intimate, although it was perhaps mainly my fault that I saw little of him outside school hours. On the other hand, he and Cabell, whose ages were quite far apart, were thrown together to a certain extent mainly because they shared the same bedroom on the ground floor of Mr. McGuire's house; but while Massie was usually in bed by nine o'clock, as likely as not Cabell might not come home at all or perhaps not until long after midnight. However, Cabell and Massie were not exactly bedfellows inasmuch as their couches were side by side with a little passageway between, but no two individuals were farther apart in disposition and manner of life. Cabell had been an Eli Banana at the University and was something of a society leader in Richmond; whereas, Massie never attended the University and seldom went anywhere far from home.

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

and tiptoed downstairs to find out what was going on in the house at that time of night. What perplexed him, however, was that ere he reached the lowest step, the commotion that had been so loud and boisterous a moment before had suddenly died out completely; all was still and silent as the grave. Now by this time poor Massie was in a cold sweat fearing that he was about to be caught in flagrante delicto, and knowing that thereafter his reputation for sobriety would be irretrievably lost. Not daring to budge from his telltale posture, but nodding desperately and frantically at Cabell, he pointed to the door with the hand that was free; then quick as a flash reached for the electric switch by the side of the bed just inside the door. The door opened gently, Mr. McGuire stood on the sill in the darkness, and Massie could almost hear his own heart beating. Would "the boss" turn on the light and reveal Cabell and him in all their iniquity? The suspense was fearful; it seemed to Massie it would never end. Yet a few seconds later, the door was shut as softly as it had been opened, and Mr. McGuire's footsteps were heard as he slowly ascended the stairs. With a sigh of relief, Massie lighted the lamp again and set the half-filled glass tumbler down on the floor. At that same moment the demijohn slid of its own accord from Cabell's shoulder and rested on the floor also, with Cabell's hand still clutching it by the handle. Then, without another word, Cabell himself sank back on the bed and fell into the arms of Morpheus.

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

more or less familiarly, some indeed intimately, and was much attached to them. Once for a whole fortnight or longer I had sojourned under the roof of the old house on Gamble's Hill while my mother and father were absent from Richmond on a long visit in New York. I was always particularly fond of Mrs. McGuire, her husband's second wife, who, having no children of her own, had a motherly tenderness that endeared her to little boys and easily accounted for the great influence she had over them as mistress of the lower school. Indeed, it was said that this estimable lady, who before her marriage was Miss Rose Morris, was as competent and highly qualified for her task as "the boss" was himself as supreme ruler.

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

hand for breakfast, but I think he got his other meals downtown. Murray McGuire was absent that year at the University, and his elder brother John Peyton McGuire, Jr., who afterwards succeeded his father, was away from home also. Robert and Garnett Nelson, two sons of the Reverend Dr. Kinloch Nelson of the Episcopal Theological Seminary, and nephews of Mr. McGuire, were both diligent and conscientious schoolboys who lived in the house and to whom I soon became much attached, especially afterwards when they went to the University and were my clubmates in the DKE fraternity.

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

certainly cannot be said that I was the slave of duty. On the contrary, at the very outset of the session, I drew the line and politely but firmly declined to stay on the job in the afternoon and be "kept in" along with the delinquents who were penalized by having to write columns after school was dismissed. I had served my time at that occupation when I was a schoolboy myself, and now when I had become a man, I was resolved, in this one instance at least, to do as St. Paul said and "put away childish things." In a word, I left this irksome and disagreeable task to be divided between Massie and Mr. McGuire, who were both too good-natured and yielding to offer any resistance. Without condoning my conduct, I contrived afterwards to find some justification for it. The fact is that during that entire session neither Massie nor I received more than about fifty dollars at the outside towards the payment of our salaries, although ultimately of course every cent was paid that was due. Mr. McGuire was the justest and most upright of men, but he was slipshod in business, so much so indeed that I doubt whether he ever collected thousands of dollars that were owed him for tuition. Lacking funds of my own, and needing the wherewithal to pay current expenses, I was reduced to borrowing from Tom, Dick, and Harry, and really led a precarious kind of existence all that year. When Nannie Minor came to town and stayed with Annie Doggett, it was incumbent on me to take them to the theatre occasionally, only I had no credit at either the box office or the florist shop. Massie was in somewhat the same predicament, but his tastes were not expensive, and besides the poor fellow was so tired out after staying in school all day from nine o'clock in the morning sometimes until five o'clock in the afternoon, that by going to bed soon after supper, he saved what little money he had. But no matter how I tried to exculpate my conduct that year with respect to Massie, to this day my conscience is not easy.

In my spare time I had laid out quite an elaborate programme of Selbst-studium, as it is called in German, which included,

besides trying to get a little better acquainted with scientific subjects, a pretty ambitious course of reading in English literature. It was inconvenient not to have a room all to myself, and as that was not feasible in Mr. McGuire's rather crowded house, I rented a comfortable apartment just around the corner on Main Street in one of a row of frame houses which was the dwelling of Miss McRae and her sister, who proved to be kind and considerate landladies in every way. As a rule, I was in the habit of taking at least one meal a day somewhere downtown, but I daresay I must have had breakfast and lunch pretty regularly at the school table, though now after the lapse of all the intervening years my recollection is a little hazy.

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

elementary substance is wholly invisible and not distinguishable to the eye from ordinary air, but, luckily or unluckily, it is highly inflammable as ordinary air is not. All I had to do in order to demonstrate that I really did have a flask filled with honest-to-goodness hydrogen gas was to apply a lighted match to it and let the little flame at the end of the glass tube speak for itself. I proceeded to do so in accordance with the written instructions; only, I am sorry to say, I did not take the precaution to make sure that all the oxygen or air originally in the flask had been duly expelled. Nature has her own way of jogging the memory, and the consequence was, a terrific explosion ensued! Glad in deed I was that my nose that day was not so monstrous as that of the mysterious "stranger" in Slawkenbergius's Tale in Tristram Shandy, for the cork in the bottle flew past that obstacle, just grazing it, and lodged deep in the plaster of the ceiling. For a moment the whole building swayed to and fro as if a gentle earthquake had passed around the corner of Main and Belvidere streets, and the next instant Mr. McGuire in quite a flutter hurried from his room to mine to find out if any of us were still alive. It was hard at first to estimate the extent of the damage and the number of casualties, for a cloud of vapour enveloped the room, and, as they say at sea, "the visibility was low." Presently, however, the smoke cleared away and the boys crawled from under the benches and began in a dazed way to collect the debris of broken glass that was scattered all over the floor. With the utmost composure I tried to explain to the Principal that the experiment had really succeeded beyond my expectations; for while at first I had only intended to show the spectators that hydrogen could indeed be ignited, now everybody present, and indeed Mr. McGuire himself and others who were not at the scene at the time, had a practical and convincing proof of what could happen when hydrogen and oxygen met under suitable conditions and were locked in a tight embrace. However, that was the only demonstration of hydrogen gas per se that my class in elementary chemistry ever got that year, and from that day to this, whenever I have sought to follow in Dr. Mallet's footsteps, I have been conscious of treading on dangerous ground and have learned to be duly circumspect.

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,

and, as far as I know, the sole survivor of all that group of jolly playmates so overflowing with life when I used to hobnob with them five-and-fifty years ago.

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

them as we went along with much show of discernment as befitted two young gentlemen just out of college.

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

sharp pain suddenly clutched me by the throat and I thought to myself, "This is tonsilitis, this is, in its most virulent form." Perhaps I was in for a siege and in that case it would be just as well to lay in a stock of provisions; so I entered the shop and bought a hunk of cheese, a box of crackers, and a bag of oranges and then hurried home to my snug and comfortable apartment. It took less than a minute to get into my wrapper and slippers and be seated in front of the cheerful fire that blazed on the hearth. A little tired and out of, breath, anxious too about that sore throat, I was yet not at all low-spirited. The bag of oranges was on the table beside my chair, and I took one and began to suck the juice. Instantly my teeth clamped shut as if they were being held in a vise and a sharp pain darted through my head. However, the clamp was gradually released, and the pang was gone; so I put the orange to my lips again. "Ouch!" I yelled and dropped the orange on the floor. The landlady came running upstairs, and no sooner had she entered the room and taken one look at me than she clasped her hands and ejaculated, "Gracious goodness! you are all swelled out with the mumps! "

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

on Main Street and had come home that evening with a three-volume edition of Carlyle's French Revolution, published in London by Messrs. Chapman & Hall and bound in red cloth, an acquisition that has been one of the treasures of my modest library ever since. I might have fancied that I had travelled much "in the realms of gold" before; yet up to that time I had never read a line of the voluminous writings of Thomas Carlyle. Now when I was shut up in my room with the mumps was the time to begin The French Revolution. I took my seat in front of the fire and opened the first volume, nor did I ever close it again that whole day until long past midnight, only pausing now and then to snatch a morsel of food. That wonderful book absorbed me as completely as if I had been transported to another planet. The story itself was a thrilling one from start to finish, from Louis Bien-aimé, who lay on his deathbed, to that young artillery officer named Buonaparte who fired "a whiff of grapeshot" at the mob and put an end to the Reign of Terror; and the way it was told and unfolded before my eyes, the epic poetry of each chapter, held me spellbound. Carlyle's imagination and power of description were enhanced rather than impeded by the strange, uncouth phraseology that, in spite of its singular "nodosities and angularities," quite fascinated me. At times the language soared to heights of eloquence unmatched in English prose. Humour was mixed with pathos in such just proportion, that as I continued to read one episode after another, it was as though I were being borne along by a current as powerful and irresistible as it was enchanting and intoxicating. All the motley throng of actors in that epoch-making drama came to life again and passed before my eyes just as they had moved and had their being here on earth a century before: Riquetti Mirabeau, "with black Samson locks under the slouch hat," his face all pitted with smallpox; "Scipio Americanus" LaFayette, renowned hero of two worlds; Anacharsis Klootz, with "the human species at his heels"; Danton, "king of the market place," andace et toujours audace; citoyen Marat and nemesis in the guise of Charlotte Corday; Robespierre, "the sea-green incorruptible"; with a host of other unforgettables, nearly all of whom, sooner or later, ran afoul of Dr. Guillotin's newly invented machine!

"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

was out, I wound up as usual in the law offices of Messrs. Thomasson & Minor where, indeed, I found quite a large company assembled already. They were all in a state of much excitement over the story of a silver mine in Arizona which was being exploited for all it was worth. It was the first time I had ever heard of it, It was called the "Tiger" mine, and Dick Thompson knew all about it, having been to Arizona and seen with his own eyes. There he was in the room with us and could vouch for the fabulous riches that were being dug out of the hole in the round as fast as picks and shovels could lay bare the glittering metal. Dick was from Culpeper, and was a younger brother of Barbour Thompson, who was not just President of the Southern Railway, but the husband too of Mary Marye (and everybody there present knew that Mary Marye was one of the prettiest as well as one of the wittiest girls that ever was born in Virginia). Dick himself was a modest fellow, not given to blowing his own horn, and was as much as we could do to worm out of him that he owned a huge block of Tiger Mine stock, had bought it indeed at ten cents a share at a time when he knew beforehand that it would certainly be selling soon for a dollar or more. We crowded around him, listening open-mouthed, and there was not one of the company who did not envy Dick with all his heart and wish he was standing in his shoes. As to the mine itself and all its possibilities, there was no room for doubt, for Dick was as transparently honest and sincere as the four evangelists of the New Testament all put together.

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

could not afford to part with more than a small slice of his holdings, he was good-natured and consented to let Dick's friend have a little piece of cake. "For God's sake, Raleigh," I pleaded, "can't you see Dick again and get him to intercede for me also." Raleigh shook his head and said he was afraid there was not the slightest chance of buying another share now when the mine was pouring out silver day and night. If they would just let me have fifty dollars' worth, I went on pleading, it would mean so little to them and so much to me. I went home and went to bed, downhearted.

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

and see if between us we could get Mr. Williams to lend me the money. That gentleman knew us both, or rather he knew both of our fathers, and received us in the most cordial way when we entered his office. As soon as we told him what our errand was, he gave the a note to sign, only there was some doubt whether Raleigh's proposed endorsement would be sufficient security. That was a real dilemma, but luckily enough, while that question was under discussion, an elderly gentleman, quite a stranger to me, happened to pass by the window on the street outside. I cannot recall his name, but Raleigh knew him and was indeed related to him in some way. Raleigh went to the door and hailed his cousin, and they spoke a few words together. Then they came inside, and the gentleman bowed to me politely and shook hands with Mr. Williams. When he had endorsed the note, he bade us all adieu amid profuse expressions of gratitude from both Raleigh and me. Mr. Williams looked at the note thoughtfully, almost doubtfully, it seemed to me; then he tapped the bell on his table, a clerk entered the room, Mr. Williams gave him the note, the clerk retired and returned a minute or two later with five crisp ten-dollar bills which he put in my hands. Early in the ensuing summer, as soon as my salary was paid in full, the first debt I discharged, e pluribus unum, was the IOU that had been signed that day in Mr. Williams's office with so much formality.

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

me that Mr. Minor had been there before me and paid his own bill and mine at the same time. From the clerk's office J went straight to my friend's room where I found him packing his satchel; but when I asked him to tell me how much I owed him, to my utter amazement he replied, without looking up from his task, "Oh, forget it! Haven't I been owing you fifty dollars ever since I got you into that bloomin' Tiger Mine?" Perhaps that was the first time the subject had been mentioned between us since those remote days when we both lived in Richmond, and now what Raleigh said was so preposterous and ridiculous that at first I could not believe he was in earnest. However, he meant exactly what he said, and as I never did succeed in finding out the precise amount of the bill, to this day I am afraid Raleigh was never fully compensated. Yet when I recall that day when we gathered around Dick Thompson and listened to his tale, the words of Zophar in the book of Job come to mind: even though I myself have not been able to find it.

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

and conceited, ignorant and foolish also, I can truthfully say I never entertained a thought of laying up for myself treasures upon earth, not so much because I was afraid that moth and rust would corrupt or that thieves might break through and steal, as because indeed my pure affections were quite otherwise engaged.

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

he is for all that is going on around him and for all that makes sense according to his understanding. The boy who sat next to Harry in the Latin class wore spectacles and his hair was parted in the middle, but even through his glasses I could see his eyes beam with delight when he caught sight of a long passage of the text in oratio obliqua and realized immediately why the mood had changed from indicative to subjunctive; for that boy had a native turn for this kind of game and loved it much better than he ever would love baseball. I had then been teaching school less than a year, but already I was beginning to think that schools were mighty inefficient, and that between teachers and pupils there was a heap of lost motion.

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

is no "conflict" at all between religion and science: could that be a correct deduction from Emerson's cryptic saying? To this day I am still at sea, yet such was my youthful interpretation, and wide of the mark as it may have been, it served me well amid those old controversies.

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:

but Dr. Spaeth's interpretation is not the same as mine was years ago, yet indeed, far better. Hear what this wise and erudite commentator has to say on the subject, for it is worth hearing:

"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

forward. The humanities, inspired as they are by the experience of the past, may degenerate into mere traditionalism unless the insights they transmit are tested and vitalized by fresh knowledge and new experience. The physical sciences, dedicated as they are to intellectual pioneering, may degenerate into mere experimentalism unless 'The Mind in the Making' is guided by the intuitions of the mind that has discovered what is worth preserving from the experience of the past."

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.

Only, in my case, it was not Mary Morison but Sallie Randolph to whom the song applied. She was Bishop Randolph's eldest unmarried daughter, about my own age. I brought garlands to her, being heels-over-head in love, and to me she was like renowned Sylvia and really did excel

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

concern, but such as they were, they had to be packed before my departure. In the course of the year I had accumulated quite a quantity of books of one kind and another; they were my "library" and represented the bulk of my real and personal property. The only hard task of moving was to put these books in a suitable case and send them to Charlottesville ere I left town. One afternoon, just two or three days before the end of the school year, I went to the big dry-goods store of Fourqurean, Price & Company, which, as well as I recall, was not far from Dupuy's Drugstore on Broad Street; and there in the basement I picked out a large cubical wooden box such as I thought would be ample to hold all my books and more besides. It was ordered to be sent to Miss McRae's house and taken to my room upstairs, and there I found it in the middle of the floor next day when I

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,

but all I could do was to assure my landlady that I would pay the damages and more besides. There was not another minute to spare, and bidding Miss McRae and her sister farewell, I hailed a streetcar and waved another adieu through the window when I got inside. At last I was on the way to the depot, my troubles all behind me! It was some satisfaction to be unable to think of a single thing I had left undone. The streetcar was drawn by a mule and went at a slow pace, stopping at nearly every crossing to let off a passenger or to take on a new one; so I had abundance of time for reflection. At the corner of Main and Ninth streets I had to get on another streetcar which had an extra mule hitched to it at that place in order to help pull up the long bill past Capitol Square from Main to Broad Street. We had passed old Monumental Church not far from the C. & 0. Depot, when suddenly the car came to a dead standstill in the middle of a block, where a crowd was collected around an old horse that had fallen in the roadway, not in its own tracks only, but right athwart the street-railway tracks also. Two policemen were trying to remove the harness and loosen the traces that were tied to a dilapidated wagon that was hardly able to stand upright on its sprawling wheels. Then in that old vehicle the box of books which I had not seen since early that morning met my eyes again! There was not a minute to lose. The freight office, luckily enough, was not more than two blocks away, and thither I hastened as fast as my legs would carry me. Well, to make a long story short, two railway porters fetched the box of books in a truck from the wagon to the depot, not without, loud groans all along the route, and in the end I caught my train and was on the way to Charlottesville.

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

had to move to Auburn, Alabama, with all my household possessions, my beloved friend and learned colleague, Dr. William P. Durfee, Dean of Hobart College, helped me to pack my furniture for that long pilgrimage. With his own bands he made sets of boxes to hold my books, each neat and compact box exactly like another so that when they were piled one on top of the other they formed a bookcase, not only useful and convenient but ornamental also by reason of its perfect simplicity. As I watched Dr. Durfee with his hammer and saw, I blushed to remember the ungainly box of books I had packed in the days of my youth, or rather in the days of my ignorance, and despatched from Richmond to Charlottesville amid so much sorrow and sweat.

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

typhoid fever, that dread malady that took its toll of victims every summer when I was a lad. Bishop Randolph and his wife came from Richmond and watched day and night by their daughter's bedside. Day after day I lingered on the doorstep of Mr. Minor's house, never once losing hope, yet dumb with fear and anguish. Hopes and prayers were all in vain. Upstairs within that darkened chamber Sallie Randolph breathed her last, and I stood beneath the casement-window forlorn and desolate.