The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I | Page 9

the reasons for this juvenile contempt. His
first report, he says, will soon reach home; he warns his mother that it
will be unfavourable, and he explains that this bad showing is the result
of a deliberate plot. The boys who obtain high marks, Page declares,
secure them usually by cheating or through the partisanship of the

professors; a high grade therefore really means that the recipient is
either a humbug or a bootlicker. Page had therefore attempted to keep
his reputation unsullied by aiming at a low academic record! The report
on that three months' work, which still survives, discloses that Page's
conspiracy against himself did not succeed, for his marks are all high.
"Be sure to send him back" is the annotation on this document,
indicating that Page had made a better impression on Trinity than
Trinity had made on Page.
But the rebellious young man did not return. After Christmas, 1872, his
schoolboy letters reveal him at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland,
Va. Here again the atmosphere is Methodistical, but of a somewhat
more genial type. "It was at Ashland that I first began to unfold," said
Page afterward. "Dear old Ashland!" Dr. Duncan, the President, was a
clergyman whose pulpit oratory is still a tradition in the South, but, in
addition to his religious exaltation, he was an exceedingly lovable,
companionable, and stimulating human being. Certainly there was no
lack of the religious impulse. "We have a preacher president," Page
writes his mother, "a preacher secretary, a preacher chaplain, and a
dozen preacher students and three or more preachers are living here and
twenty-five or thirty yet-to-be preachers in college!" In this latter class
Page evidently places himself; at least he gravely writes his mother--he
was now eighteen--that he had definitely made up his mind to enter the
Methodist ministry. He had a close friend--Wilbur Fisk Tillett--who
cherished similar ambitions, and Page one day surprised Tillett by
suggesting that, at the approaching Methodist Conference, they apply
for licensing as "local preachers" for the next summer. His friend
dissuaded him, however, and henceforth Page concentrated on more
worldly studies. In many ways he was the life of the undergraduate
body. His desire for an immediate theological campaign was merely
that passion for doing things and for self-expression which were always
conspicuous traits. His intense ambition as a boy is still remembered in
this sleepy little village. He read every book in the sparse college
library; he talked to his college mates and his professors on every
imaginable subject; he led his associates in the miniature
parliament--the Franklin Debating Society--to which he belonged; he
wrote prose and verse at an astonishing rate; he explored the country

for miles around, making frequent pilgrimages to the birthplace of
Henry Clay, which is the chief historical glory of Ashland, and to that
Hanover Court House which was the scene of the oratorical triumph of
Patrick Henry; he flirted with the pretty girls in the village, and even
had two half-serious love affairs in rapid succession; he slept upon a
hard mattress at night and imbibed more than the usual allotment of
Greek, Latin, and mathematics in the daytime. One year he captured the
Greek prize and the next the Sutherlin medal for oratory. With a fellow
classicist he entered into a solemn compact to hold all their
conversation, even on the most trivial topics, in Latin, with heavy
penalties for careless lapses into English. Probably the linguistic result
would have astonished Quintilian, but the experiment at least had a
certain influence in improving the young man's Latinity. Another
favourite dissipation was that of translating English masterpieces into
the ancient tongue; there still survives among Page's early papers a
copy of Bryant's "Waterfowl" done into Latin iambics. As to Page's
personal appearance, a designation coined by a fellow student who
afterward became a famous editor gives the suggestion of a portrait. He
called him one of the "seven slabs" of the college. And, as always, the
adjectives which his contemporaries chiefly use in describing Page are
"alert" and "positive."
[Illustration: Allison Francis Page (1824-1899), father of Walter H.
Page]
[Illustration: Catherine Raboteau Page (1831-1897), mother of Walter
H. Page]
But Randolph-Macon did one great thing for Page. Like many small
struggling Southern, colleges it managed to assemble several
instructors of real mental distinction. And at the time of Page's
undergraduate life it possessed at least one great teacher. This was
Thomas R. Price, afterward Professor of Greek at the University of
Virginia and Professor of English at Columbia University in New York.
Professor Price took one forward step that has given him a permanent
fame in the history of Southern education. He found that the greatest
stumbling block to teaching Greek was not the conditional mood, but

the fact that his hopeful charges were not sufficiently