Hampden Sydney College - Kaleidoscope Yearbook (Hampden Sydney, VA)

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with home-made mucilage and sent back with the answer enclosed. At this time, especially, his correspondence was voluminous and envelopes were probably quite dear. The making of lilibusses was another scheme for doing away with the use of matches then under a heavy stamp tax. The old letters, instead of being burned after reading, were torn in strips and skilfully rolled in a graceful spiral so as to form excellent lighters for lamps, while they were not unornamental to the mantelpiece, standing in a Hower-vase, as they generally did. He had the same disposition to keep his hands busy as Dr. Dabney. Though he did not, like him, make cart-wheels, doubtless many a sermon or lecture was shaped in his mind while these I' filibusses were rolled in his deft fingers. XVhere he got the name I never knew. XYalker's tilibustering expedition of some years before may have suggested this as a mode of harmless tilibustering on the domain of the match manufacturers. We can think of few greater contrasts than that between the work of these fingers and that of the mind which was subconsciously, or half-consciously, moving them. Dr. Smith was at this time striving to save the Seminary and to set it on a new career of usefulness. Through these years of stress and struggle he could say of this great work, 'A This one thing I do, though minor occupations were continually claiming his attention and receiving their relative share of it. Not only did he succeed in retrieving the losses occasioned by the war, but in preparing the institution for a larger work than it had ever accomplished before. Wliilst one of the most conservative of teachers in the best sense, he was at the same time progressive and enterprising in securing the best means for keeping abreast of the times and equipping the Seminary with the best appliances for furthering the knowledge and culture of the students. The progress of archae- ology, which has become so marked a characteristic of our times, was compara- tively in its infant stages then: but it enlisted his deep interest-especially every- thing in it connected with the newly-deciphered cuneiform inscriptions. This can be illustrated by another extract from Dr. Moore's sketch, He sought help in this line from those able to give it. Among the donations of this period were an inscribed brick from Babylonia, two valuable casts of other cuneiform tablets in the British Museum, and a set of fine photographs of the cities of the seven churches in Asia, all presented in 1879 by Mr. XV. R. Reynolds, of Norfolk, Ya. In 1883-84 the same liberal gentle- man made another generous gift to the library, a plaster cast facsimile of the celebrated black marble obelisk of Shalmanezer H f85O B. CJ, with its wealth of bas-relief sculpture and cuneiform text, About the same time, at Dr. Smith's 23

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interleaved volume, he says: ' It is gratifying to state that, during a period of thirty-five years since the printed catalogue was prepared by me, I find that not over two or three volumes have been lost, and those of no great valuef But friends of the Seminary in Yirginia, also, added liberally to the resources of the institution. In 1877 Mrs. Ann Davidson, of Rockingham County, left, by will, several thousand dollars with which the scholarship bearing her name was founded, and an unknown giver founded the Tabb Street Church scholarship by the gift of 35,000 The largest of these scholarships was endowed by lllr. Joseph Blair lVilson, of Collierstown, Va., who, Hrst and last, gave 334,000 for the purpose. Wfhen we remember that to Dr. Smith's personal inliuence and unceasing endeavors, most of these accessions to the resources of the Seminary were chiefly due, it does not seem strange that he was a busy-looking man. Some may wonder how Dr. Smith and Dr. Dabney, gentlemen and scholars as they were, could bring themselves to the performance of such arduous tasks as their farming, which has been mentioned, involved. One answer is in the word, necessity. The other is that they were real men as well as gentlemen, and where duty called they went. Hoeing corn, pulling fodder, and similar occupations were the duty of the hour for them in 1865 when the labor system had been suddenly broken up, and there was little money in their purses with which they could have employed it if it had been available. Two students of Theology will always remember recitations to Dr. Dabney in the waning light of the evenings of that summer, when, after his day's work in the field, he would sit with them on his portico and examine them, without book, on what they had learned during the day in I-Iill's Divinity, which he had given them as the text-book for the time, though Turretin was the regular text-book studied in the Seminary in connection with his lectures and reference books. Though his hands had been wielding the hoe all day, he could not let them be idle now 5 and while examining his students he was generally engaged in plaiting straw with which to make a hat. It is hard to say now just how, in each case, families lived through the war times and those immediately succeeding. Living on noth- ing a year was a hard problem indeed. A glimpse into the way it was done may be gotten in this hat-making, and in the exhibition of samples of home-weaving by the ladies when in their social gatherings. In addition to their neat homespun dresses, each would have on hand a variety of samples of various patterns which she had woven with her own hands. The writer remembers, as one of Dr. Smith's thrifty devices of the time, the turning of envelopes inside out. Wlieii a letter was received, the envelope was opened by no means carelessly-steamed, possibly-and then turned, made over 22

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request, Professor J. R. S. Sterrett, a member of the XVolfe expedition to Baby- lonia, purchased for the library two additional cuneiform tablets of small size. During the eighteen years after the Civil W'ar, Dr. Smith, while accomplish- ing so much for the general interests of the Seminary, had borne the whole burden of teaching in the department of Oriental Literature without assistance. In 1883 the lloard of Directors took action looking to the employment of an assistant in this work. In the language of the record: The consideration leading to this step is the propriety of bringing some relief to the Rev. Dr. IS. M. Smith, the able, faithful, and honored professor in that department, in view of the weight of advancing years and the disabilities which naturally attend upon them. Their choice, at Dr. Sn1ith's own suggestion, fell upon the Rev. VV. XV. Moore, then a young pastor in Kentucky, who had been graduated from the Seminary a few years before, and who is now widely known as one of the ablest professors and most attractive preachers in our country. For those who knew Dr. Smith only in his extreme old age when the strength and brightness of his faculties had somewhat waned, it will be interesting to have the estimate of an honored colleague who knew him at his best. The Rev. Dr. H. C. Alexander, in a paper before me, speaks, as only one so capable of appreciat- ing his varied excellences could, of his rare executive ability when he was in his prime, his astonishing facility and fecundity as an offhand speaker: of his more formal addresses before church boards and judicatories, as well as popular assem- bliesg of his peculiar, almost unrivaled, genius, in his best days for debate, of his felicitous, and sometimes humorous, after-dinner speeches tor talksj-as for in- stance, at one of the trienuial banquets of NVashington and Lee University, and tin a more serious and impressive veinl at the Hampden-Sidney Centennialg of his unusual gifts and success as a pastor, both in town and country: of his long and useful service as collegiate pastor twith his mighty colleague, Dr. Dabneyj at Hampden-Sidney and of his extraordinary qualifications and merits as an effective, as well as instructive, preacher, when he was roused to the utmost by the audience or the occasion. He tells us of the estimate of a most competent judge of preaching: Joseph Addison XiVaddcll if tl: it has calmly said to me that he has heard Dr. Smith preach in Staunton when he seemed to him to be ' almost inspired to say exactly the right thing, in exactly the right words, exactly at the right time.' But his own testimony is hardly less emphatic: The strongest impression I ever knew him to make by a single memorable discourse was at Columbus, Mississippi, during the meeting of the General Assem- bly. Dr. Palmer preached that day: but on returning from one of the Methodist 34