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

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Mcllwaine. Years after at a meeting of the Virginia Synod in Petersburg, Mcllwaine gathered at his home all of the old boys he could find, and gave us a Hampden-Sidney dinner. There were scores of others, but time fails me to speak of all. Each one has won his place in life, and each one would to-day attribute his success to the training of those old days. It seems only yesterday when we sat around the old belfry, and dreamed of the future. Then we were young and hopeful, eyes bright and cheeks rosy. To-day if we could gather there again, what a contrast there would be-a group of old men with scanty locks covered with the snow of age, sunken cheeks and bleared eyes. Yet the hearts would be as young, and the jokes I am sure would be brighter and more pointed. ll. THE FACULTY As compared with the Faculty of the College of this day, they were few in number. Yet each one was a past-master in his department. The President was Dr. M. P. Atkinson, one of the best and purest men I have ever known. I can see him now, as he comes waddling across from his home-a heavy. ungainly man with a face in which you saw moral courage of the highest order, and a heart as tender as a woman, and as true as steel. No man, occupying such a position, ever left a better or more lasting impression upon the boys under him. Years after, a lawyer in Baltimore whose college days were wild ones, said to me, that if he had ever amounted to anything in life it was due to the impress made upon him by Dr. Atkinson. Then there was L. L. Holladay, the most rounded character I have ever known. For nearly six years I sat by him at his table, and enjoyed the most intimate friendship with him, and now as I compare him with other men I have known, I cannot recall his equal. He had a keen sense of humor, eyes that twinkled when a joke was coming: a true sense of justice, that gave him unbounded influence over boys, and knit them to him with bands of steel. I can see him now, as, at a fixed hour every afternoon, he sauntered along the Via Sacra with his cane under his arm and his two pointer dogs running ahead. Prof. Walter Blair at that time boarded with Prof. Holladay. He was a thorough Latin Scholar, but with a frozen kind of dignity with which difhdent men protect themselves. In after years I found that he had laid a fine foundation of Latin which stood me in good stead on more than one occasion. He married before the close of my stay in College and opened a home of his own. I-lis wife was a Baltimore lady, who brought with her some finger bowls, the first that many had ever seen, and when they were invited to a meal there, many and ludicrous I7 .

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Several of us new boys were invited to a room where apples and cider were dis- pensed, and where I first met Old Crews-who was known as the Widow's Crusef' an old fellow who had served in the Confederate army, and had been wounded in the leg, and who bravely fought his way through College and the Seminary, overcoming diffr- culties that would have daunted men less in earnest, and who lived for several years, doing good work in the ministry. Of course there were many jokes told on him, some illustrating his courage, and some his scholarship, but none of which I shall tell, because, however much I may have laughed at him then, I can now see that it took courage and labor to do what he did, and it is my prayer that when I report above my life's work, I may have as good a record of courage, devotion and usefulness as old Crews had. Perhaps for the sake of system, it will be well to ureminiscen first about the students. then the Faculty, and finally the social life, but even this division, unless some check is put on, will soon develop into a garrulous story of the long ago. I. THE STUDENT BODY Since leaving College, I have lived in two college towns, and I have roamed from Dan to Beersheba, but I have not only never found such a set of young men as those who constituted the student body in l87l, but I doubt whether a finer set were ever gathered together. It is not a case of distance lending enchantment, but they fully deserved this reputation. I cannot recall hearing an oath for two sessions, and while there were one or two who would drink, they were rare exceptions, and they generally did so in secret. It was at this time that I first met my life-long friend, Charles Ghiselin, with whom I roomed for five years, two in College and three in the Seminary-a man of brilliant intellect and lovely character, and moreover a fellow of infinite jest! Frank Bedinger, whose love of lengthy speech was proverbial, a habit that I understand has stayed with him through life: Jim Tredway, now a Judge in Virginia, whose bearing always was that of a gentleman: Reike, of rotund proportions, so round that when he was thrown to the ground in football, he was at times unconscious of the fact, as his head was always the same distance above the ground: Peter Woods, now preaching in Baltimore, whose rich tenor voice often disturbed our consumption of the midnight oil: Old Cal Wilson, who was for so many years the pastor of a large country church-a man whose natural indolence stood out in such striking contrast with the brilliancy of his mind: Harry Thornton, the youngest man in the class, who bore off the First Honor, and who afterwards bravely met death in the frozen wilds of Alaska: J. Addison Smith, whose subsequent career in the ministry has shown that none of us was the son of a prophet, Pat Law, the present gifted editor of the Presbplcrian Standard. In the higher classes there were Buck Bishop and Alex. Hall, Billy Ward and Willie I6

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were the blur ders made over the finger bowls. One man actually drank the water in which sliced lemon Hoated, and then privately complained that the lemonade was very weak. Col. Delaware Kemper dispensed Math in its various phases. Unfortunately, he was a mathematical genius, who, by the way, always make poor teachers, and conse- quently we all graduated with a minimum amount of knowledge. In Conic Sections we were hopelessly at sea, and none of us could exactly understand what a Locus was, and when we asked for an explanation, his reply was, A Locus is a lucid phantasusf' Since I have learned more of a Locus, l can see some appropriateness in his answer. ln C-reek we had Prof. Addison Hoge, as he then spelled it, though it has been changed since to l-logue. With the lazy student he was not popular, for he had no mercy on a shirker. On one occasion some disgruntled one wrote on the board, Hog by name, hog by nature, Hoge by an act of the Legislaturef' While he was unpopular with a certain set, with the real students he was regarded as one of the best men in the Faculty. I have studied Greek under others, and I have taught Greek at different times, but to my mind Buck Addie, as we called him, was by far the best teacher I have ever known. At one time I had some reputation myself teaching Csreek, but whatever success l had was due to his training. and especially to the fact that l followed his methods. ln those days we had only five professors and a limited curriculum, but the founda- tions laid were far better than the superficial smattering of the present day. III. THE SOCIAL LIFE I am not familiar with the social life of the College at this time, but l am sure that it is not equal to what it was in the Seventies, for though the quality may be the same now, the quantity will make the difference. At that time, besides the families of the College Faculty, as at present, there were the Professors of the Seminary with their charming family life, which combination formed a social life that in culture and refinement stood far above any l have met, after an experience of many years. These homes were always open to the students of both institutions, and now when I recall how green and uninteresting we were, l wonder at their spirit of self-sacrifice. It was a wisely devised school of refinement that polished up the embryo preacher, and prepared him for the social life of his future calling. Nearly every home had its quota of pretty daughters, and each one was a reigning belle, owing to the law that governs supply and demand. ' How vividly comes up the memory of those calico days, when the Seminites and the College boys met on the social arena, each antagonistic to the other, and all trying to win the favor of the fair one. I8