University of Virginia Library

VI
STUDENT AND INSTRUCTOR BOTH
1891-1893

DOUBTLESS NO INDIVIDUAL ON EARTH HAS SUCH A PALPABLE air of superiority and tone of condescension as a full-fledged senior in college. Though I myself had not yet attained this high rank in 1891 or indeed anything like it, I am inclined to think I took myself rather seriously at that time and halfway expected to be regarded by my fellows as something on the order of an elder statesman. If so, I was quickly disillusioned. I was certainly more mature than I had been three years previously when I first matriculated in the University, and much more serious also, being absorbed now in my work and having little time to bestow on Calico and other frivolous diversions to which I had once been addicted. However, it was not only I myself who had changed in the course of two or three years, for as a matter of fact there was a subtle change also in the atmosphere of the whole student body, not quite clear to me at first, yet very perceptible. Nearly all my old comrades had finished their prescribed courses, and their dear familiar faces were now

no longer to be seen on the campus. To me it seemed as if a totally new criterion of distinction had been established during that year when I was absent in Richmond and as if a new order of knights had been created. In the somewhat disdainful mood I was in at the time, the parvenus who had risen to prominence in college looked like pygmies as compared with their predecessors to whom I had given such willing and unquestioning allegiance in days gone by. So it is always when a revolution has been accomplished: an individual who has taken no part in it and has himself been "ploughed under," as the saying is, never does quite relish the new situation and is indeed disposed to be resentful.

The most obvious innovation was the complete ascendency of athletics in all student activities. Breckinridge Robertson was not an athlete himself, but he aspired to be the chieftain of the powerful Athletic Association, and Colston Blackford of Lynchburg and Oliver M. Catchings from Mississippi followed close in his footsteps. The real athletes who were idolized by the students were my old friend Addison Greenway; John Greenway, even more popular than his elder brother, and afterwards famous comrade of Rough Rider Teddy Roosevelt; Murray McGuire, whom we verily believed to be the greatest college base ball pitcher of all time; "Cap" Smith from South Carolina, beloved from one end of college to the other; A. Lee Thurman, big and handsome, who afterwards married Mary Cochran, as handsome and almost as big as he was; Bill Abbot, who never curried favour but always found it, and whose darling elder sister Jeannie was one day to be my own dear wife; and other champions too, less noted, yet who shone resplendent enough in those far-off days.

From 1888 to 1890, Hampden Bagby had been a teacher in Clarence Wallace's high school for boys in Nashville, Tennessee, and now having returned to the University in 1890, was working towards the degree of Ph.D. in Physics or Natural Philosophy. During the same session 1891-92 my other intimate friend Raleigh

Minor gave up practising law in Richmond and exchanged places with his elder brother John B. Minor, Jr., who for the past year had been helping his aged father as acting instructor in Common Law, and who now became the other partner of Edwin B. Thomasson's law firm in Richmond. The three of us together, Hampden Bagby, Raleigh Minor, and I, were a DKE trinity to whom was joined also Sherrard Tabb; yet, much as we esteemed ourselves, we were forced to admit, sorrowfully enough, that we had sunk in the esteem of the Venable girls and were now not much better than "poor fish" in their inconstant hearts.

Meanwhile, sometime during that year when I was in Richmond, Mary Venable had been duly wedded to Dr. Charles L. Minor, Delta Psi; and from that day forth, if indeed not earlier, the DKE sphere of influence no longer extended much beyond the threshold of Aunt Mary's house. Though I had returned to college and was again living next door on East Lawn, I was not now a regular guest at her table as I had been previously; yet I cannot recall the boardinghouse where I got my meals. For the time being Cantey and Natalie Venable were, so to speak, mesmerized and under the dominion of a foreign yoke, for such was the phrase used by the Saxon DKE's to describe the Norman conquest of the Delta Psi's. This situation, so ignominious for me and my comrades, lasted more than a year. Yet in the end the DKE's may be said to have been the real victors; for just when Cantey Venable seemed to be within Billy Peterkin's grasp, that is, towards the end of my last session in college (1892-93), young Lochinvar came out of the West in the guise of Clarence Dallam of Paducah, Kentucky, a DKE before my time, and carried Miss Cantey away as his bride, having indeed been engaged to her all the time. Then several years later, my chum Raleigh Minor, darkest of all dark horses, won Miss Natalie's fair, if unscrupulous, hand in one of the most exciting steeple-chases of all the "gay nineties." If here my metaphors are mixed, it is because the events themselves were mixed and not capable of being recorded in sober prose. I know that I, for one, was generally

on the false scent and never got on the track of the real fox until he was standing in front of the altar, meek as a lamb. I do know for certain, however, that up to that moment, frolicsome Natalie had as many as three DKE's and one Delta Psi all tied on her string in tandem, as one might say, and that the fury of the DKE's towards one another was fiercer than their common hatred of the lone Delta Psi. The truth is, in those days the romantic affairs of Miss Natalie Venable were as complex and mysterious as those of one of Dostoievsky's heroines, and even Katerina Ivanovna might have yielded the palm to her.

While I was teaching school in Richmond, two important changes of instructors had taken place in the University, which I must notice here. First, "Math" Miller, who had formerly been Colonel Venable's right bower, had been transferred to the post of instructor in Physics or Natural Philosophy; and, second, young Harrison Randolph, who, like Dr. Goldsmith, touched nothing that he did not adorn, had taken Miller's place in Mathematics. Being absent from college at the time, I had not kept pace with the shifts and promotions among the satellites in the faculty; nor was I aware that inasmuch as Miller himself was leaving the University at the end of the session 1890-91, the post of instructor in Physics had become vacant.

Soon after I returned from Richmond to Charlottesville, perhaps about the middle of June, 1891, I received a message from Professor Smith asking me to come to see him at his office. At the same time my friend Jim Corbitt from Tidewater Virginia, afterwards the Honorable James H. Corbitt (1869-1945), a leading member of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia for many years, received a similar, if not identical, invitation. Whether we went together to see Professor Smith, or whether each of us had a separate interview, I cannot recall, but the upshot was that each of us was offered the post of half-time instructor in Physics at a salary of $400 per annum. I was both dazed and elated, it seemed too good to be true, and while I

accepted the proposition not without inward trepidation, I accepted it also without a moment's hesitation, and my recollection is that Jim Corbitt did likewise.

What greater happiness could be in store for me than to be constantly in the light of "Frank" Smith's countenance, to serve him day and night without ceasing, and to show him by word and deed that I was his faithful and devoted disciple? Nor was the stipend of $400 to be considered otherwise than as a bountiful and providential dispensation whereby all my pecuniary difficulties had been suddenly solved as if by the wand of a fairy godmother. The only apprehension in my mind was as to whether I myself was equal to the opportunity. How was I fitted to be an instructor of Physics when, for example, I had never heard a lecture or opened a book on the subject of electricity and magnetism? My ignorance, as none knew better than I, was truly colossal, and I knew that "Frank" Smith knew it also. I believe Corbitt had the same misgivings. The bargain which I made in the end was that while I, for my part, promised to leave no stone unturned in order to make me capable and worthy of my task, yet Mr. Smith, on his part, must consent to be patient and forbearing without expecting much at first. So it was agreed with mutual protestations of friendship and goodwill.

The die was cast. From that moment I resolved to be a natural philosopher all the days of my life, nor have I ever repented of that decision. That selfsame evening I read a chapter in Helmholtz's popular scientific lectures and copied in my notebook Schiller's famous line as quoted by the great physicist:

which I took to mean that I would woo my heavenly mistress even though I might never hope to win her.

When I was in college, it was the custom for the senior class in Natural Philosophy to study light and sound one year and electricity and magnetism the next year, in regular alternation. Now neither Corbitt nor I had ever taken the latter subject,

which, as it turned out, was to be given in the session 1891-92; so it behooved us both not only to attend the senior class that year but to prepare for it in advance by studying hard during the long summer vacation. The chief textbook was Cumming's Theory of Electricity, which somehow has vanished from my library; a really excellent book in its way, except that I took a violent dislike to the author. It seems to me his Christian name was Linnaeus, which had a heathenish sound, but what I disliked most of all was that I never could discover a trace of the milk of human kindness in a single page of that volume. However, two far more formidable treatises which I tackled at the same time were Andrew Gray's Theory and Practice of Absolute Measurements in Electricity and Magnetism (London, 1888),which had just been published a year or two previously, and Atkinson's English translation of Mascart and Joubert on electricity and magnetism (London, 1883),each in two large volumes. Stewart and Gee's Lessons in Elementary Practical Physics (London, 1889),the second volume of which was devoted to electricity, was another work which I studied carefully that summer, trying out the laboratory exercises as best I could by myself. I remember reading also Oliver Lodge's Modern Views of Electricity (London, 1889)and perhaps P. G. Tait's Recent Advances in Physical Science (London, 1885), wherein that "fiery Celtic" author crossed swords, in the preface to the third edition, with Professor du Bois-Reymond, Secretary to the Royal Academy of Sciences of Berlin. My old college-mate Joe Dunn was now at the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Alexandria, and when he heard that I was an instructor in Physics, he sent me a copy of the Life of James Clerk Maxwell (London, 1884),a welcome gift indeed, though I never was sure whether it was intended to signify approval or disapproval of my new and strange occupation. Accordingly, by the end of my first year as instructor, I had already accumulated a little collection of standard books on physics and had diligently studied most of them.

As I have mentioned before, my friend Hampden Bagby was likewise studying Physics at this time, However, he was wiser than I was and more far-sighted, inasmuch as he was well on the road to the degree of Ph.D., which he soon obtained. I did not realize then, or afterwards until it was too late, the academic advantage and prestige of a doctorate, which was almost a sine qua non for getting a place as teacher in an American college. The fact that Bagby and I were trudging along the same scientific path and were actuated by the same motives and the same purpose in life proved to be a great help and stimulus to me; especially as he was farther advanced than I was, and, consequently, I learned much from him in those early days.

A few years later, in 1895, when news reached this country by cable of Röntgen's discovery of the so-called X-rays, Jim Corbitt was still instructor in Physics in the University of Virginia, Hampden Bagby had already begun his long and distinguished career as a professor in Hampden-Sydney College, and I was teaching Mathematics and Physics in the Miller Manual Training School of Albemarle. At the same time I believe Henry Louis Smith, afterwards president of Washington and Lee University, was taking postgraduate Physics under "Frank" Smith. Within not much more than a fortnight after the announcement in the New York Herald of the discovery of the hitherto unknown radiation, each of the four young physicists above mentioned had succeeded, quite independently of one another, in making good X-ray skiagrams of such things as a bunch of keys and perhaps also of human finger bones and the skeleton of a frog. As far as I know, although I am entirely unable to prove it, these were the earliest X-ray pictures that were obtained in the United States.

In October, 1891, soon after the opening of the session, Mr. Smith was summoned to Kansas City, Missouri, by the death of his son Harry Smith, a promising young lawyer in that fast-growing midwestern metropolis. Thus suddenly and quite

unexpectedly it devolved on Corbitt and me to meet the classes in Natural Philosophy and conduct them as best we could in Mr. Smith's absence of about ten days. The division of labour we made between ourselves was for Corbitt to take the senior class and for me to have charge of the big junior class. It was short notice; yet I had to make a pretense of giving the lectures, and the thought of it put me on my mettle. Fortunately, the class was just beginning, and the subject to be expounded was quite elementary, concerning indeed nothing more abstruse than the composition and resolution of vectors (parallelogram and triangle of forces, velocities, etc.). However, I sat up late at night in preparation for the task ahead of me next day and committed almost by heart three or four pages of one of the early chapters of Daniell's Textbook of the Principles of Physics (London, 1885) which I intended to intersperse with illustrations and anecdotes culled from Dr. Neill Arnott's delightful little volume on the Elements of Physics (7th ed., 1887); as, for example, the vertical and horizontal motions concerned in ascending or descending a flight of steps, the path pursued by a boy skating athwart the smooth surface of a cake of ice that is being carried down stream by the current of the river, the track of smoke issuing from a locomotive going north so many miles an hour while the wind was blowing east, etc. Much to my relief, I believed I had acquitted myself fairly well on this first adventure, and I gained a little confidence in my ability to cope with an emergency; yet withal I was conscious of owing much to the courtesy and forbearance of my auditors. They were good sports, appreciating my difficulties and refraining from taking advantage of them and putting me to shame, as they might easily have done. However, I was glad when Mr. Smith returned and took the reins in his own hands.

My colleague and I were certainly very inexperienced that first year, and our shortcomings must have been manifest; yet in industry and fidelity Mr. Smith never had before or afterwards two more zealous and conscientious assistants. However, it

seemed to me he rewarded us with little encouragement and with scant courtesy. Much as I loved and admired him, there were times when I felt something akin to resentment when, in spite of all my efforts to please my employer, I could not win a word of approbation from him. On the contrary, in a mild and gentle way Mr. Smith was apt to show signs of impatience and even of vexation whenever I happened to be a little clumsy and did not quite fulfill his expectations. Indeed I was not always responsible for a blunder I made, inasmuch as I had had no previous instruction on the subject and was necessarily ignorant of the modus operandi with respect to a particular experiment which was being demonstrated to the class and which I myself was witnessing for the first time.

Once indeed Mr. Smith subjected me to much mortification in public, nor can I forgive him for it even to this day. He was wont to prepare the experiments for his lecture without my assistance, but while the lecture was in progress I sat on a front bench so as to be at Mr. Smith's beck and call in case he happened to need me. On this particular occasion the subject of discussion concerned the behaviour of gases and the validity of Boyle's Law. The instrument used for some demonstration or other was a piece of homemade apparatus, such as Mr. Smith was ingenious in constructing, consisting mainly of glass tubes and scales fastened together on an upright wooden support. I had never seen it before that day and was ignorant of its purpose and operation. In the midst of the experiment Mr. Smith paused and beckoned to me to lend a hand, What he wanted me to do was merely to stand at the blackboard behind him and write down two rows of figures as he called them aloud from the readings of the empirical scale. I was aware that the numbers had to be manipulated according to some unexplained process in order to obtain certain numerical results that would tend to verify the law. The operation was simple enough if only I had been let into the secret beforehand, but as it was, I stood there more or less bewildered. Mr. Smith glanced behind him, and seeing that

I was at a loss, snatched the stick of chalk from my fingers and with the utmost facility completed the required computations. The whole class tittered, and I walked back to my seat rebuked and humiliated. Of course, I remonstrated with Mr. Smith after class, but he made light of the affair without offering a word of apology.

It is painful to discover that the idol you have bowed down before and worshipped has feet of clay. It is a singular fact that in the time of my apprenticeship, that is, during the two years that I was instructor in Natural Philosophy, it never occurred to me to seek aid or advice from Mr. Smith, sorely as I was in need of both. It was impossible for me to get near to him or to gain his favour. It was as if an invisible barrier stood between us. Yet afterwards, for many years as long as Mr. Smith lived, that barrier was removed. I shall never cease to regard him as one of the most gifted men I have ever known.

Here I cannot refrain from relating another anecdote of an entirely different and rather ludicrous nature concerning an episode that took place in the electrical laboratory that first year when Corbitt and I were colleagues. together. More than once I have already had occasion to allude to Bob Radford, eccentric and erudite instructor in Ancient Languages, who at this time was an applicant for the degree of Master of Arts. The only subject he had not yet completed in that iron-clad curriculum was Natural Philosophy, for which he had not only no predilection but a most inveterate and unconcealed antipathy. In the laboratory he was like a fish out of water or perhaps more like a bull in a china shop. It was enough for him to put his finger on a piece of apparatus for it to get out of order, and indeed it would be lucky if the instrument was not damaged beyond repair. Now one of the most delicate and intractable of all scientific instruments is Coulomb's torsion balance for measuring the force of attraction or repulsion of two separate charges of electricity and verifying the law of the inverse square of the

distance between them. It is simple enough in construction, for it consists essentially of a long and exceedingly light lever suspended inside a closed cylindrical glass case by a quartz fibre, so as to oscillate to and fro in a horizontal plane under the slightest compulsion. It is not necessary to describe the apparatus more in detail, except to say that the balance is so sensitive that in order to read the measurements on the circular scale on the outside of the case, the observer has to look through a telescope mounted on a table so far away from the instrument itself that the movements of the needle will not be affected by his own nearness to it. The fact is that the experiment is so difficult to perform accurately and successfully that I doubt whether it was ever accomplished even by Coulomb who devised it; nevertheless, it was one of the prescribed experiments in Mr. Smith's course in electricity and magnetism. Of course, it was a farce to expect Radford to do this feat, but Corbitt and I explained the whole thing carefully and gave him a sheet of written instructions; then with many cautions left him to his own devices and the instrument itself to his tender mercy! How many days and weeks poor Radford persisted at his dreary task without making any progress, I cannot say precisely. All I know is that long before he desisted and gave it up in despair, he was haggard and woebegone, and Coulomb's torsion-balance was so completely out of adjustment that we had to send to Messrs. Queen & Company in Philadelphia for an entire new set of levelling screws. It got to such a pass that the mere sight of the apparatus was enough to set Radford in a paroxysm of rage. Occasionally Corbitt and I used to watch him from a hiding place behind one of the brick pillars of the laboratory in the old "Annex" building, where we could see him and the contortions of his face without being seen ourselves. Ever and anon Radford would mop his brow with a handkerchief compressed into a hard knot in his clenched fist, and then the sight of his agony might have melted a heart of stone; yet I am ashamed to say we split our sides with suppressed laughter. The Holy Inquisition never invented a device that was more truly an instrument of torture than Coulomb's torsion-balance was that session for Bob Radford; and if either of the two instructors ventured to say a kindly word to him or offered a bit of advice, all the thanks he got was a look of hatred such as might have flashed from the eyes of John Randolph of Roanoke towards one of his adversaries.

There must have been a special dispensation in Radford's behalf, whereby he was not held accountable for his lack of ability in laboratory work; for after all he graduated in Natural Philosophy, magna cum laude or otherwise, and certainly got his M. A. degree at the end of the session.

Now that I ranked as a member of the faculty, even though my foot was on the lowest round of the ladder, the two last years I spent in the University were on a somewhat different footing from that of the previous years. However, I was still a regularly matriculated student and a candidate for graduation, first, in Modern Languages (both French and German), and, afterwards, in History and Latin, and I was as active as ever in fraternity affairs. Besides Hampden Bagby, Robertson Gordon, Murray McGuire, Bob Mason, Raleigh Minor, Sherrard Tabb, Joe Winston, and myself, other members of Eta Chapter of DKE in 1891-92 were: Joseph P. Green, Lewis Machen, Robert Nelson, Herbert Old, Charles T. Reifsnider, P. S. Rhett, Albert and Barnwell Stewart, J. Waverley Thomas and several others whom I remember without being able to call their names at the moment. Our club meetings were held pretty regularly every Saturday night in the little DKE cottage on Carr's Hill where Tom Wood and Jeff Norris used to room together when I first came to college. Yet it seems to me I must have spent the whole of that session deeply engrossed in my studies, for of all the four years of my college career the haziest in my memory is that third year, a really eventful year of my life when, knowing that I was no more than a raw recruit in the ranks of Physics, I set to work in dead earnest with no other ambition except to be worthy of my high calling.

My friend Sherrad Tabb got his M.D. degree in June, 1892, and planned to spend the next year or two in Richmond as interne in St. Luke's Hospital, which Dr. Hunter McGuire and his gifted son Stuart had established recently in a new building erected back of Capitol Square not far from the old Exchange Hotel and Ballard House. Sherrard boarded in college at Mrs. Perkinson's in Dr. Holmes's house on East Lawn, and now when he was packing his things and getting ready to depart, he sent a bundle of miscellaneous articles to my room for me to look over and dispose of for what they were worth. Of all that pile of plunder the only two pieces I can recall were a framed picture or sepia print of a girl lying sideways on a sofa with one arm under her head and a dreamy look in her eyes turned towards the spectator, and a sealed demijohn of pure applejack brandy which I suppose Sherrard had purchased from one of those peddlers who used to issue from the Ragged Mountains and prowl around the University at night tempting us to buy their illicit "moonshine." That picture hung on the wall of my room for a year or more, and the girl and I used to gaze at each other with mutual admiration. I lost sight of her when I myself left college and have never seen her again from that day to this. As for the jug of brandy, I lost sight of it almost from the moment I got it, for I put it on the floor in a dark corner of the closet where my washstand was and forgot all about it.

During those years when I was an instructor in Physics, I lived at the University all the year round and kept steadily at work through the long summer when everybody else was having a vacation. Under the circumstances my room was a convenient storehouse for many little treasures and keepsakes that were left in my care while the owners were absent from college. Ordinarily the precious archives and secret minutes of Eta Chapter were in the custody of the guardian who lived in the DKE cottage, but when the end of the session came and the cottage was vacant, the heavy wooden chest in which these valuables were kept under lock and key was conveyed to my domicile on East Lawn and

entrusted to my care. The box was about eighteen inches high from the floor, too high to get under the bed, and the only place to put it was on the hearth in front of the unused grate, although it was in the way there, and I used to stumble over it in the dark.

In midsummer the Lawn of the University of Virginia can be as hot and nearly as desolate as the desert itself. I happen to recall one particular evening about the middle of July, 1892, partly because even late at night the mercury hovered around 90°. Not a breath of air was stirring, and as far as I knew, I was the only human being anywhere in my vicinity that had not put out his light and gone to bed. Yet quiet as it was all around me, and lonely as I was, trying to put my mind on my book, the little room itself was the arena of incessant — or may I say, "insectuous"? — activity; for the door and the window both were wide open, the electric bulb that hung from the ceiling was brightly lighted, and every variety of fly, moth, and beetle that ever flourished in Albemarle, myriads of every species, were swarming and buzzing around my head and having no end of fun at my expense, just as if it had been a rehearsal of one of the plagues of Egypt. By midnight the heat and the flies together were more than I could endure, and I closed my book and decided I would extinguish the light and go to bed. just at that moment Harrison Randolph entered the room from the arcade outside, as noiselessly and as stealthily as an Indian, and flung himself down in the chair on the other side of the table. "Hail to thee, blithe spirit!" I exclaimed rising from my chair and extending my hand to greet him, not noticing at first the dejection of his countenance. It turned out that he had been spending the evening with the Venable girls next door, but not having heard a sound from that quarter, I think it passed through my mind that it could not have been a very gay party. Harrison was not very communicative, and all I could get from him was that he had eaten something at supper that had disagreed with him and given him a pain in the stomach. Then he asked me if I would be good enough to give him a dose of bicarbonate of soda. Alas! the

shelf in my closet where I kept my little stock of drugs contained paregoric, castor oil, and epsom salts in abundance, but not even a half teaspoonful of soda. Then I spied the demijohn of applejack brandy in the corner on the floor and without a word pulled it forth and set it on top of the wooden chest in front of the fireplace. Harrison watched me gloomily while I tried to be cheerful and recommended brandy as "the sovereign'st thing on earth" to restore a disordered stomach. Neither he nor I, I was pretty sure, had ever tasted a drop of "mountain dew" before that hour; and as I poured out a jigger-full in a little medicine glass and held it up to the light, clear as crystal and colourless as water, my hand shook and I came near spilling the contents. Then suddenly I raised the glass to my lips and, turning my eyes towards the ceiling above me, emptied it down my throat in one gulp. After waiting several moments in suspense, I smacked my lips and remarked placidly, "By Jove! that's the smoothest fire-water that ever flowed through a gullet, if only you know how to quaff it." So saying, I poured out another jigger and handed it to Harrison sitting opposite me, and without another word he tossed it down his throat just as he had seen me do it a moment before. The effect was instantaneous and miraculous; his eyes sparkled, his tongue was unloosed, and the pain in his stomach took flight as if it had been wafted away by the wand of a magician.

Now we were two young and ambitious instructors who had come together that hot summer night and were in the mood for deep philosophic discussion. As the subject of conversation got deeper and deeper, the talk got to be more animated and elevated and was louder and louder. Ever and anon one of the two disputants would pause for a moment, pour out another jigger from the bountiful demijohn, and toss it down his throat as nonchalantly as if he had been the Duke of Wellington. The jug was on the chest midway between us, and we ourselves were not a yard apart. The hard black beetles buzzed and droned about our heads; yet we talked on and on unceasingly at

the top of our lungs. Mathematics and physics, religion and philosophy, all intermingled, were the themes of discussion, and every word that was uttered I believe might have been heard on Observatory Mountain. The moon had sunk long since, but whether day had begun to dawn, I cannot say for certain, though suddenly it dawned on me that we were bawling at each other beyond all propriety. Therewith, all at once, I lowered my voice and said with perfect composure that while our discussion was like one of Plato's dialogues, the manner in which it was being conducted was certainly too boisterous. "Well," said Harrison rising from his seat and speaking also in a perfectly natural tone of voice, "I suppose you are right, but it has been mighty enjoyable and profitable too, and now it's pretty late, and I had better be getting home." He lived with his mother and sisters in a frame house which I believe is still standing, just around the corner from Main Street on the way to Fry's Spring. From my room on the Lawn it was not a long way he had to go to get to his house; yet I begged him, but begged him in vain, to abide with me as the night was far spent. So we parted with many a fond adieu.

It was not without some little difficulty that I got on my feet, undressed, turned out the light, and at last got in bed. When I waked next morning, rather later than usual, the first object that met my eyes was the demijohn on the wooden chest, with the medicine glass beside it, both in position just as we had left them a few short hours before. By morning it had turned a little cooler, and by the time I had shaved and dressed, I had an appetite for breakfast and did not seem to be any the worse for not having had as much sleep as usual. On my way to the post office about an hour later, just as I was passing the corner of East Range in front of "Wash Hall," I noticed a solitary figure coming towards me up the hill. His step was not very brisk, but as we drew nearer to each other, his appearance was familiar and strange at the same time. It was not until we were just a few yards apart that I recognized my friend Harrison Randolph, only

there was a long strip of court plaster over one eye and a shorter piece behind the ear on the other side. "Good Gracious!" I exclaimed. "Yes," he replied with a faint smile, "I must have hit every pillar and post on my way home last night, but for all that, I know now that moonshine or whatever was in that bottle is efficacious for a pain in the stomach! "

The last time I heard of Harrison Randolph (who I believe is just my own age), he was president emeritus of the College of Charleston, South Carolina, where he had had a long and distinguished career for more than half a century. Since those far-off days when we were two youthful instructors in the University of Virginia I have never laid eyes on him. I wonder if he will vouch for the accuracy of the story I have just related about that hot summer night when we talked and drank together in my room on East Lawn; certainly one of the most profitable and enjoyable evenings I ever spent in my life.

In addition to his many other natural endowments, Harrison Randolph had a real genius for music, and it was worth going to chapel on Sunday evening just to hear him play the organ. The grey-stone chapel, so incongruous with the architectural plan of the University and so manifestly out of place, erected mostly by private subscription, was in those days the newest edifice on the campus. To that pious enterprise I believe my dear Aunt Mary contributed a large sum of money, and I well remember the day when the new chapel was dedicated with much pomp and ceremony, the preacher for the occasion being the Reverend Dr. Henry Van Dyke of Princeton University, who was afterwards ambassador at the Hague. "Pete" Adams of Lynchburg, who had a heavenly tenor voice, used to sing regularly in the choir; and on any one of those rare and memorable occasions when Ethel Neely of Norfolk happened to be visiting at the Robertson's on Park Street and it was noised abroad that she was going to sing a solo at vespers, you may be sure not an empty pew was to be found in the chapel that Sunday evening. It was indeed an exceptionally good choir, but it mattered little to me

whether it was good or bad so long as I could sit in a pew and gaze steadfastly at Jeannie Randolph, Harrison's younger sister .and a member of the choir also; truly "a thing of beauty and a joy forever." No vestal virgin was ever haughtier or more disdainful, nor did Jeannie Randolph notice me more than the dust under her feet. If she ever smiled at all, it was in secret as far as I know, for certainly she never smiled on me; yet to this day I cannot forget what an enchanting sight it was to see Jeannie Randolph in the chapel choir as far removed from me as the evening star in the firmament.

"Voulez vous some peanuts haben?" — some such polite and polyglot question was the form of salutation by which a candidate for graduation in the School of Modern Languages was wont to greet a fellow candidate. For my part that was about as far as I ever got in the gentle art of conversation in a foreign tongue. It is true, in my early boyhood I had sojourned the whole of one winter in the cathedral town of Amiens and had acquired perhaps as much facility in speaking colloquial French as a native Virginian is likely to obtain under such favourable conditions; yet by the time I was old enough to go to college the memory of that accomplishment was not much more than a myth, and I am sure that no word I ever uttered at that time would have led even a detective on the order of Sherlock Holmes to suspect that a portion of my youth had been passed on the banks of the Somme.

Nevertheless, thanks to Professor William H. Perkinson, who was an able and conscientious teacher, by the end of the session of 1891-92, my progress in learning French and German, without indeed being much to boast of, was at least such that I might claim to have a bowing, if not a speaking, acquaintance with the foremost writers in both languages, not excepting the great lyric and dramatic poets. The practical advantage which I gained that year was worth far more than I realized on the day when I received my diploma, for thereafter I was to enjoy free access to

the great library of scientific literature not in the English language only but in French and German as well. In a comparatively few years, that is, by the time I was a fellow in Physics at the Johns Hopkins University (1898-99), I venture to say that German treatises on physics and mathematics outnumbered all the other volumes on the three or four shelves of my bookcase.

I had planned to take Professor Noah K. Davis's course in Moral Philosophy in my fourth year in the University (1892-93), but just as I was about to matriculate at the beginning of the session, it dawned on me that, according to the new regulations of the Board of Visitors, all that stood between me and the attainment of the degree of Master of Arts was graduation in the Schools of Latin and History. Hitherto I had never entertained any thought of planning my curriculum with reference to that aim, but now that the degree happened to be within my grasp, I decided wisely enough that I could not afford to let the opportunity slip. On the other hand, I was so entirely engrossed in my new scientific pursuits that the thought of studying Latin once more and "wasting precious time in that graveyard" (as I remember saying to my father at the time) was distasteful if not actually bitter. The task was not a grievous one nor altogether uncongenial, only my heart was not in it, and for the time being Greeks and Romans had ceased to play any part in the plan of my life. Yet now in retrospect I am glad indeed that I elected to take Latin and sit at the feet of "Old Pete," for otherwise I should certainly have missed a part of the atmosphere of the University of Virginia in the days when "Latin, Greek, and Math." taken all in one session was the trinity known as "the green ticket."

Colonel William Elisha Peters was a renowned scholar in his own domain, simple and unaffected in all his ways, and as rugged and absolute as the ablative absolute itself. Latin syntax was his forte and Latin metre was his hobby, but of Latin literature itself I think he had no more appreciation than he had of the art of the Etruscans. Marcus Tullius Cicero was Colonel Peters's favourite author simply because his writings were the

model and criterion of classical Latin prose, wherein every sentence, nay indeed every word, was to be taken as an original and indisputable contribution to Latin grammar. From Ennius and Terence to Seneca and Pliny, Colonel Peters had the ipsissima verba of every Latin author on the tip of his tongue and could quote them at a moment's notice by way of apt illustration and confirmation of the dogmas of his own Syllabus and Case Notes, two erudite volumes that as curiosities of literature might be said to be as truly super grammaticam as the Emperor Sigismund himself.

I doubt whether I ever had a kinder or truer friend in the world than Colonel Peters was in the days when I was a pupil in his class, for I stood high in his favour at that time. It came about by pure accident. One day when I was least expecting to be "called on" to recite and was totally unprepared, he asked me out of a clear sky to translate a passage in Livy which I had never before laid eyes on until that very instant when Charley Abbot, or whoever happened to be seated on the bench next to me, handed me his open book and put his finger on the place. As I recollect it, the first word of the sentence was the verb constitutum est, which stared me in the face as if it were the signal of battle. Then suddenly it flashed across my mind that, according to the code we had to go by in all such matters, one of two translations was permissible; namely, either "the fact was established that" or "the result was" ditto, depending on whether the following clause was the accusative and infinitive (oratio obliqua) or was ut with the subjunctive, and the only question was which of the two renderings was the correct one in this particular instance. At this distance from the event my memory may not be entirely accurate as to the details, but I do know that I took a chance that day and fortune favoured me. No sooner had I pronounced the right words than Colonel Peters came down from his platform and almost embraced me; henceforth, I had to live up to the reputation of being his star pupil for that year.

Dr. Dabney's course in European History, which I took that

same session also, began, I believe, with the age of the Antonines and came down to the fall of Napoleon. It was a pure delight to me from start to finish, instructive, stimulating, and exceedingly interesting. The textbooks, including Bryce's Holy Roman Empire, Froude's sketch of Caesar, and Dabney's own essay on The Causes of the French Revolution, as well as several other volumes whose titles I have forgotten, were all classics of their kind. It was a privilege indeed to be a pupil of Heath Dabney, as indeed I fully realized at the time; yet it was a higher privilege, as I have realized more and more every year of my life, to know Heath Dabney affectionately and intimately. Not only I but many others also can bear witness that here indeed was un chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, as true and steadfast a gentleman as ever walked on earth.

The culmination of those contests for the honour of being final president of the Jefferson Literary Society occurred during the last year I was in college. The fight waged between the two opposing candidates, Murray McGuire of Richmond and Mallory K. Cannon of Norfolk, was long and bitter. As instructor in Physics it is doubtful whether I ought to have descended into the arena of college politics, but I was a violent partisan and could not keep out of it. As a matter of fact, I was the active manager of McGuire's campaign, and Breckinridge Robertson was my firm ally and efficient helper. "Mike" Cannon was a prominent student in college who had taken his M. A. Degree in June, 1892, along with Harrison Randolph and Bob Radford, and who was now in the Law School. The political leader of the Cannonites was an Irishman from Clarke County, known as "Kit" Carson, and afterwards widely known in the Philippine Islands as Judge Adam C. Carson. He was a man of no mean ability, a born politician if ever there was one, clever, resourceful and adroit, affable, good-natured, and likable; but in my opinion he was absolutely untrustworthy and unscrupulous.

That battle was a celebrated affair more than half a century ago, but the story is too long to tell, and besides, the real facts of the controversy on which everything hinged were never completely revealed or ascertained beyond the shadow of a doubt. it is certain that more than three-fourths of the entire student body would have cast their votes in favour of McGuire, if only they might have been members of the Jefferson Society and had had the right of suffrage.

It so happened that at the beginning of the session not more than a mere handful of students were enrolled as members of the Society. As soon as it became apparent that McGuire was the overwhelming choice of the college at large, the Cannonites, who happened to have for the time being a majority in the Jefferson Society, resorted to the questionable tactics of preventing applicants for membership from joining the organization. Accordingly, regularly every Saturday evening the instant the Society was called to order, "Kit" Carson or one of his henchmen made a motion to adjourn without transaction of business, simply in order to thwart the perfectly perfunctory election of new members. Week after week, with well-nigh incredible difficulty, Breckinridge Robertson and I assembled our cohorts in front of the doors of the Jefferson Society, some two or three hundred all told, seeking and demanding admittance for them; week after week admittance was denied them, unlawfully and scandalously, as we bitterly contended. We believed that the enemy had resorted to a mean subterfuge in order to escape certain defeat, and the feeling between the two parties was at fever-heat. Certain parliamentary questions were involved. The only copy of the new constitution of the Society which had been ratified and adopted but which had not yet been printed, disappeared mysteriously from the desk of the secretary where it had been kept, and was never afterwards found; the reason of its disappearance, as we alleged, was because this document explicitly forbade the employment of the tactics that had been adopted by our opponents. Dissension rose

to such a pitch that each side denounced the other in broadsides published in College Topics. When that sheet appeared one Saturday afternoon (in December, as well as I recall), excitement was intense everywhere on the campus. That same evening long before the appointed hour of the meeting of the Jefferson Society, the hall on West Range was already packed and jammed with members and applicants for membership so that not a bit of standing room was left, while outside a mob of students was assembled under the arcade. No pretence was made of calling the meeting to order, and if a speaker sought to make himself heard above all the din and hubbub, he had first of all to elbow his way through the throng to the rostrum where other orators were getting up steam also. Breckinridge Robertson was the first to get the floor, and then even that turbulent and unruly audience was mesmerized and constrained to preserve a certain decorum by listening to his quiet and forceful presentation of our side of the controversy; for Breckinridge Robertson was naturally one of the best debaters I have ever heard, and it was easy to see that his speech poured oil on the troubled waters and produced a profound impression. When he concluded, "Kit" Carson ,vas already on his feet, so that it cannot be said that he rose to reply, nor indeed can it be said that he attempted to reply to the argument at all. However, he did speak, and spoke at great length. His voice was smooth and insinuating, his manner cool and deliberate, and from the point of view of his admirers I suppose his harangue was considered clever. I was not an unprejudiced judge, and to me standing there opposite him on the rostrum it was as if every word that Carson uttered was as false and insolent as if it had issued from the lips of Lucifer. It was all I could do to hear him in silence to the end, and when he finished, I looked him square in the face and told him that he was both a blackguard and a liar! Then pandemonium broke loose in the hall of the Jefferson Society. Tom Pinckney of South Carolina and Lee Marshall of Maryland, two of the gamest fighting cocks ever bred on earth, were close behind me on the platform, and had they not been held in leash at that moment, they would have leaped on Carson and saved me from my own fate. It was a tense moment which might easily .have led to a free-for-all fight.

How the crowd dispersed that evening without riot and bloodshed, I cannot tell because I myself was so wrought up and so much in the thick of it that I really never knew all that happened afterwards. Before the morning dawned, Carson and I had had a furious fist-fight upstairs in the old gymnasium at the end of East Range. That encounter lasted thirteen rounds, and was a bloody affair in dead earnest. Neither of the two combatants had the faintest notion of boxing, and each slugged the other with mortal hatred. Every blow landed full in the face, and then one of the so-called pugilists would pummel the other unmercifully pursuing him round and round the ring until the gong sounded. The mortification I experienced was far worse than the punishment I got, and I had plenty of both that night. The Irishman took a lot of punishment too, but in the end, I am sorry to say, he was the victor; for when in the last round I stumbled over a piece of furniture that was nailed to the floor and fell and was felled to the ground at the same time, that was the end of the battle.

It was a week or more afterwards before my swollen features had subsided enough to assess the damage I had sustained; then I had to go to Richmond in order to get Joe Dunn's brother, Dr. John Dunn, to mend my nose and heal some other broken places in my physiognomy. It was an uncomfortable experience, not only because for some reason or other I could not be given a local anaesthetic and had to endure the pain as best I could, but also because I dreaded to appear in public in such a sorry plight. I can never forget how kind Mrs. Bagby was to me at this time and how grateful I was to her. I stayed in her home nearly a week during that ordeal, and it was there that I met Lucy Day of Smithfield who was the guest of Martha Bagby and her sister. The Democratic Convention which nominated

Thomas S. Martin of Scottsville for U. S. Senator from Virginia happened to be in session in Richmond at that time, and Lucy Day boasted that if Tom Martin was elected she would marry him one day. While everything was still hanging in the balance, and while I was being renovated by Dr. John Dunn, I remember writing a "poem" to Lucy Day, one of its verses being as follows: Needless to say, that headstrong young lady paid no heed to my muse, and so far as subsequent events were concerned, I might as well have held my peace. Tom Martin was elected Senator, Lucy Day became his bride, and they went to Washington to live; thereafter, being so far above me and my earthly existence that I never laid eyes on either of them again.

That disorderly meeting of the Jefferson Society, followed as it was late that night by a gladiatorial combat between two of the principal debaters, was the crisis and climax of the fierce Cannon-McGuire political campaign that had been waged all over college for weeks and weeks. So much bitterness and resentment had been engendered that it is no wonder the faculty was bound to intervene and put an end to it. It was mutually agreed on both sides to submit the fundamental question at stake to a committee of arbitration, with power to decide which of the two candidates for the office of final president was entitled to be declared victor without further contest. Accordingly, two leading members of the faculty, Professor Noah K. Davis and Dr. Paul B. Barringer, were chosen as umpires in the dispute. The case was argued before this committee at great length, and it took a long time to adjudicate it. Each side presented a written brief of many foolscap pages, and through the years that have come and gone, I still have the original of the paper I wrote in behalf of the supporters of Murray McGuire. "Noah K.," who

was chairman of the committee, took his duty very seriously and was a great stickler for formality and parliamentary procedure. The preambles and felicitations that he deemed to be appropriate and necessary in order to signify our perfect confidence in the wisdom and integrity of the arbitrators were hard to anticipate, and frequently a note which I had addressed to the committee was returned because it was not couched in diplomatic language. Many times Breckinridge Robertson and I were summoned at a moment's notice to appear in Professor Davis's study just across the Lawn from my room, in order to clarify or correct sonic phraseology we had used. As far as we could judge, it was a matter of no importance; yet we never dared say so in the presence of the supreme being before whom we stood in fear and trembling. On such occasions the old gentleman received us graciously — and cordially enough, bidding us take our places on the sofa opposite the big armchair in which he himself was seated; then without another word he would close his eyes, let his head sink down in his long beard, and go into some kind of trance, very much as if he were acting a part in the Book of Revelation. Thereafter, for ten or fifteen minutes it seemed to me, not a sound would be made in the room, even Noah K.'s groans de profundis that ordinarily came with the regularity of clockwork ceased to be heard. Presently he would open his eyes. and begin to speak in an oracular voice, while we, sitting on the sofa, listened in silent amazement to the outflow of his prolonged meditation. When we were dismissed, neither Breckinridge nor I had the slightest inkling whether the omens were adverse or favourable.

However, at last the decision of the committee of arbitration was pronounced in our favour. So it came to pass that in June, 1893, Murray McGuire was indeed final president of the Jefferson Literary Society, having won what used to be regarded as the highest honour conferred by the students themselves on one of their number. Alas! by that time the interest and excitement of the campaign had died out, and the ancient Jefferson

Society, already on the wane, was pretty nearly defunct as the arena of college politics.

My incursion into that famous campaign in the session 1892-93 brought me into personal contact with a greater number of students than I had ever known before in any one year, for it was my business to solicit votes in behalf of our popular candidate. Nobody was eligible to vote unless he was a registered member of the Jefferson Literary Society and had duly paid an initiation fee of ten dollars. The poll tax was high, the enthusiasm of the average partisan was seldom more than lukewarm, and the task of the "spellbinder" was an uphill job. Never before was my acquaintance among my college-mates so widespread and indiscriminate; yet never before since I first set foot on the campus was I oppressed by such a sense of loneliness and aloofness. Not many of the comrades of earlier years were left in college to keep me company, and I myself, student and instructor at the same time, had become a kind of amphibious animal, so to speak, of such dubious nature that the ordinary undergraduate was a little at a loss as how to take me. Among the younger men in college that year to whom I was fondly attached were Bill Abbot, Ned Craighill, Lee Marshall, Tom Pinckney, and Henry Rieley, to mention only such dearly remembered names as leap from my pen in the act of writing; yet they treated me more as a mentor and "elder statesman" than as one of themselves and were under a constraint not altogether compatible with pure and unalloyed friendship.

One of the big society events that took place towards the end of the session was the wedding of Cantey Venable to Clarence Dallam of Paducah, Kentucky, to which I know I have alluded already. The day before the ceremony the bridegroom came to town escorted by a tribe of thorough-bred Kentuckians, in whose honour he gave a "wine-supper" that same evening in a room over Eisenmann's Saloon on Main Street. As toastmaster on that festive occasion I won great applause by re-affirming

Aristotle's doctrine of Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum; which led to much debate, especially as to whether an empty bottle was a vacuum within the meaning of the law, for if so, how could a wine-bottle ever stay empty? as was plainly in evidence by empty bottles all over the table. In those antediluvian days when Mr. Hotopp's Monticello Wine Company was a going concern and flourished in Charlottesville in spite of Mrs. Cochran's Temperance Union, a brand called "Hermann" was renowned not only for its excellent flavour but above all for its notorious potency. Many bottles of this wine were emptied at Clarence Dallam's pre-nuptial banquet, and so enraptured were the Kentuckians by its merits and spirits that it is said that they bought the entire stock next day and carried it back home with them. I do not vouch for the story, but I must say I have never seen another bottle of Hermann wine from that day to this.

I cannot remember distinctly whether it was that same spring or in the following autumn, 1893, that Susie Minor was led to the altar by John Wilson of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but I know I was present at that ceremony also. One of her lovely bridesmaids was a girl named Jeannie Abbot, and it was then that I saw her for the first time in my life. She was clad that evening in a grey crêpe-de-chine gown with an accordion pleated skirt that was mighty becoming to her tall graceful figure. Little did I realize then that that charming and cultivated girl would one day be my wedded wife and evermore as long as I lived be all the world to me!

The fourteenth of June was the last day of the session 1892-93, and likewise my last day in the University of Virginia. On that day I was publicly declared to be a Master of Arts, along with John Stewart Bryan, James H. Corbitt, J. Markham Marshall, Flugh H. Young, Robert F. Whitehead and several others whose names I have forgotten. Among those who graduated in Law were George Ainslie (who married Nonnie  Burthe ), A. C. Carson, Oliver P. Catchings, James E. Heath, Jr., J. Jordan Leake (final president of the "Jeff." in 1892), J. Breckinridge

Robertson, and E. Randolph Williams; and in Medicine my two clubmates Powell C. Fauntleroy and Joseph B. Greene.

The days of my youth were ended.

Those horse-and-buggy days when I was a student at the University of Virginia lie far behind me; nor did I ever dream then that I should live to see the time when a speaker standing in front of a little radio-electric instrument might be heard distinctly in his natural voice by an attentive listener in the farthest part of the globe. Then the University of Virginia was but a small and unpretentious college as compared with what it has grown to be in little more than half a century. If the number of students can be taken as a measure of size, the University now is, roughly speaking, six times as big as it was then, and the teaching staff has probably increased in something like the same proportion. New and imposing buildings equipped with every modern convenience and all the costly apparatus that is requisite nowadays for the purposes of higher education, have been erected all over the campus. In actual dollars and cents I daresay the annual budget of the great Alderman Library with all its useful adjuncts and departments exceeds the total revenue of the University as it was in my time. However, in less obvious ways I believe the University of Virginia in 1890 was not inferior to the lordly institution which it has since become ere yet the first half of the twentieth century is completed.

Alma Mater can justly upbraid me for many and grievous shortcomings, but she cannot reproach me for lack of gratitude and filial affection. Without exception I look back on my teachers in the University of Virginia with respect bordering on veneration, though I do not doubt that their places are filled now by scholars no less renowned and no less worthy of love and admiration.

In a great university, as I conceive it, it should always be possible for a capable and diligent student to obtain what is called a "liberal" education as distinguished from a "useful" or

vocational training, important as the latter may be also, and as it certainly is for proficiency in the learned professions. Years ago when I was a young professor in Hobart College, Geneva, New York, my honoured friend Dr. Durfee, said to me once that if he could have his way, he would write over the archway of the college gate, "Nothing useful taught here." Of course, what he meant to imply was that the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake was such a pure and high endeavour that it ought not to be hampered or frustrated by any ulterior motive of profit and utility. It is now considerably more than a century since Michael Faraday in England and Joseph Henry in the United States, each independently of the other, yet almost simultaneously, discovered and studied the curious phenomenon of electromagnetic induction between currents of electricity in different circuits. When someone asked Faraday "After all what is the use of it?" he replied by asking in his turn, "What is the use of a child save that one day it may grow to be a man?" It is common knowledge now that those original and ingenious experiments were the forerunners of the marvellous industrial applications of the science of electricity that in our own day have revolutionized man's life on this planet.

In proportion as an individual has acquired the intellectual culture implied by a liberal education, he is thereby qualified and enabled to use his reason intelligently and effectively with respect to nearly every subject that is brought to his attention, reaching out towards the truth if haply he may grasp some portion of it. A liberal education enlarges the mind and empowers it to survey and contemplate many objects at once, just as the mobile eye scans a wide field of fixation in order to assign each visible item to its proper place with respect to all the others within the range of its orbit, and thus to obtain a just and comprehensive idea and perception of the entire scheme. as an ordered whole. A cultivated mind is open and dispassionate, its conclusions are rational and tentative, subject to revision in the light of clearer and deeper insight; hence, it never assumes

infallibility and is never intolerant of the different conclusions of other cultivated minds. "The bodily eye," says Cardinal Newman, "the organ for apprehending material objects, is provided by nature; the eye of the mind, of which the object is truth, is the work of discipline and habit."

It is no easy matter to sift truth from error; yet it is the task of all others on which man's salvation depends. Doubtless one reason that people on earth today are confused and tossed by such contrary beliefs and winds of doctrine is because the leaders of public opinion, alas, more often than not, are themselves deficient in liberal education. Year after year our modern colleges and institutions of learning send forth hosts of fresh graduates, some of them no doubt expert and skillful enough in their own special and narrow provinces; yet withal so limited in nearly all other fields of knowledge that for the purpose of comprehending a variety of phenomena in their mutual interdependence, such education as they have acquired is indeed more of a hindrance than an advantage.

The original meaning of the word universitas was simply "a number, a plurality, or aggregate of persons; Universitas vestra, in a letter addressed to a body of persons, meant merely 'the whole of you.'" In the earliest period the word was never used by itself but generally in some such phrase as universitas magistrorum et discipulorum meaning a community of teachers and scholars. In the foundation of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson lived to see the achievement and fruition of the fondest dream of his old age. The site of the new institution was chosen amid congenial surroundings of great natural beauty, and Mr. Jefferson himself designed the plan and supervised the construction of the buildings that are to this day a lasting monument to his genius and labor. But the aim of all his endeavors was the establishment in his native land of a community of teachers and scholars that would flourish and endure from generation to generation, a beacon light to all mankind.

The university exists for its pupils, not for the teachers only.

It should be hospitable to those alone who crave its fellowship and "are inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue."* The ideal university begins with a group of eminent and gifted instructors; it emerges in a class of distinguished scholars. The primary concern of such an institution is not the comfort or even the well-being of the student, neither his amusement nor his happiness, worthy of consideration as all these factors of his life certainly are. The time-honoured maxim, mens sana in corpore sano, is valid and applicable in every walk of life, and perhaps it needs to be stressed particularly in the sedentary occupations of a scholar; but there can be no greater mistake than to suppose that the heart of a university lies in the gymnasium or on the athletic field, much less in a clubhouse or recreation centre. Fraternities and convivial societies, carnivals

and gladiatorial games, pastimes and creature-comforts, all perfectly innocent and harmless enough in themselves, are at most the accidents and incidentals of college life, in no wise peculiar to it; for all these pleasures and diversions may be equally enjoyed in almost any other section of society, by merchants in the city, by farmers in the country, or by artisans in the factory. To be sure, neither the moral life not the social life can, or ought to, be divorced from the intellectual life, and both must have their due and proper place in the ideal of a university as an institution enduring from generation to generation and dedicated to the quest of knowledge and wisdom.

The aims and rewards of the scholar in the university are not those of the market place, and the standards of excellence are not measured by the ordinary yardsticks of the world at large. In the midst of the world, and by no means unmindful of it, the university is set apart, separate and distinct. In proportion as it is influenced and controlled by church or state, it is likely to come short of its purpose and endeavour. The spirit that animates a Newton, a Darwin, a Helmholtz, or a Pasteur has little or naught to do with the petty and ephemeral concerns of everyday life. Devoted to the task he has set himself to do, the true scientific explorer is heedless of the toil and careless of the wages; piloted by the everlasting stars, he keeps his eye steadfast on the goal and will not be turned aside. To him all the wealth of the Indies is as fool's gold compared with the prize of wresting from Nature a precious secret never before divulged.

The size of a university is not a measure of its achievement. A little grain of radium will outweigh a car-load of lead in intrinsic value. Useful, praiseworthy, influential, and powerful as some of our modern universities undoubtedly are, especially here in the United States, nevertheless, it seems to me that the essential purpose of the establishment is in danger of being obscured and possibly lost sight of altogether.

Industry, patience, humility, faith — these are the distinguishing traits of the truth-seekers in the realm of intellect. The

ideal university is an aristocracy of such philosophers and scholars as will steadily resist and withstand all pressure from without that tries to introduce the facile aims of democracy. In this sense the great lines of Lucretius come to my mind as being applicable to the conception of a university as an earthly. institution, yet exalted above the vanity and turmoil of earthly strife: