Augusta Military Academy - Recall Yearbook (Fort Defiance, VA)

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‘Delightful task! to rear the tender thought, To teach the young idea how to shoot; To pour the fresh instinction o’er the mind, To breathe the enliv’ning spirit, and to fix The generous purpose in the glowing breast. ’ “When it was announced that he had opened a school he could not accommodate the applicants and for the first two years he taught chiefly young soldiers whose education had been cut short by service in arms. That was the beginning of what was afterwards to be- come the Augusta Military Academy, our beloved Alma Mater, which he so long conducted in person as principal and teacher. “Por some years after he had built the splendid Academy build- ings the Old Brick School house in the grove of the Old Stone Church continued to be used as a recitation hall. It was most fitting that over the hallowed ground where that old building once stood the lifeless body of our lamented preceptor should be borne by sorrowing friends to its committal back to the earth from which it had come. “Prof. Roller was a prince among teachers. He was gifted with the instinctive talent of being able to impart knowledge to others. He was not only the master of the subject to be inculeated, but he understood the student whom he sought to teach.. He had the happy faculty of adopting himself to each individual student. Coupled with these was his commanding presence which enabled him to bring out and develop the best there was in a young man in in- tellect andin morals. He entered heartily into the life of those under his care. He kept himself in sympathetic touch with them. He had a way of gaining their confidence and of pursuading them to ; follow his leading in learning and in life. He had a magnetism that was irresistable and his more than 2,000 students held him in the highest respect, both as teacher, friend and man. He dealt with all the subjects he essayed to teach witha master hand, but he exceeded as ateacher of the Ancient Classics, especially those in the Latin tongue. Here he was at his best. No one could be under his in- struction in Latin very long without having awakened within him enthusiasm for that language. The passion of his life was to inspire his boys with a sober interest in the hard work of life and to pro- al

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marches, the pangs of hunger, the desire for sleep, all the suffering s for the poor, ragged and starving soldiers in grey he patiently en- dured. Many times he was in the whirlwind of the charge, and in the smoke and fire and rain of shot and shell which he always met with characteristic courage, facing death for the cause he loved. The day before the surrender of Lee at Appomatox he was wounded and captured by the Union Soldiers and for a short while remained a prisioner of war. There are those who would induce our govern- ment to maintain a large standing army in time of peace as prepar- atory to some future emergency which may require it. The bul- wark of the defense of our country lies not in such an army, but in the hearts of the American people. It is the citizen soldier like Chas. S. Roller, and not the mercenary hireling that this Republic must look for the protection of its rights and life. “Mr. Roller accepted the issue of the war between the states as the unerring verdict of high heaven. Disappointed he was that the cause for which he fought had not been victorious, but discouraged never. He went to work bravely and earnestly to do his part in re- storing the Southland to the old order of things. Like his illustrious Commander-in-Chief, Robert E. Lee, he chose the life of teaching as the field affording him the largest opportunities of repairing the havoe made by war. He was himself an educated man, a college bred man, and he knew, as every intelligent man knows that from the days when Themistcles led the educated Athenians at Salamis, the sure foundation of any government and the well-being of any people are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance, and that every sneer at education, at culture, at book-learning is the demagogue’s sneer at intellectual liberty, inviting national degeneration and ruin. He well knew that Tis education forms the common mind, Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined,’ and so he set himself to train the rising generation of his beloved land. , “Tn 1866 he began his first work as instructor at Old Stone Church in the Old Brick School house under the massive spreading oaks on yonder near-by hill. 10

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vide them with that mental and moral furniture which would fit them to amount to something more than a cipher in solving the problem of humanity. “We who are factors in human progress are too close to give a just view of its true proportions, or to select from the processes those which are the most potent. We are like explorers wandering through a broken region, who magnify every height they scale into a mountain; that which is close at hand being the theme of their exclamations and the source from which their reason forms conclu- sions. These may or may not be correct. But let us withdraw, as men hereafter will withdraw with the Muse of History, from the lands over which we have toiled so perplexedly, and from the dis- tance view the contour of the country out of which details have vanished, and of which the prominent characteristics alone remain. Then we shall see before us a region, mountainous and bewildering indeed, but overlooked and dominated by a few lofty peaks, to which men shall give unforgotten names, and upon whose summits the sun of truth shall linger long after the subject lands lie in darkness and oblivion. Even so it will be with a few great names that, in the lapse of endless time, will survive and keep alive the memory of that noble company of educators who are doing such great things for the ushering in the dawn of millenium and among that company one of the highest, purest, and the most symmetrical will be Charles Summerville Roller. “The influence of an institution like this which he founded cannot be estimated any more than you can measure the effect of the sunlight on the trees or fields, or weigh the sweet influence of the’ stars on the thoughtful beholder. To every tnoughtful mind it is none other than a seminary where immortal minds are being trained for eternity, Those who labor here are building structures whose ° foundations will stand, when not merely temple and palace, but the perpetual hills and adamantine rocks on which these buildings rest, have melted away. Here lights are kindled which will shine, not merely when every artificial beacon is extinguished, but when the affrighted sun has fled away from the heavens. Our lamented friend took the initial steps in founding here a school whose 12