Southwestern University - Souwester Yearbook (Georgetown, TX)

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Perhaps the most admirable quality of this contagious enthusiasm is that it is curbed to enter into the performance of the endless drudgery con- nected with the teaching of English. It has not been many years since the head of the department at Southwestern taught practically all the Freshman English, Sophomore English, and one or two advanced courses — courses always full. Nevertheless the profusion of required themes and examinations were always carefully read. 1 always read everything required to be written, said Professor Pegues once. 1 remember that one busy commencement he told me that in my examination 1 had erred in using raised for reared. There is a certain pride, even awesomeness in the man — somehow, to me, connotative of Daniel Webster — that makes him stand aloof. Yet I can well see his fitness for this later office of dean. One year when he sacrificed to superintend Mood Hall he would read the exhilerating ballads of Kipling to the fellows that were sick. And 1 know of one youth who was raised up from his bed by the roses sent by him and Mrs. Pegues. (It were hard to think of him long without thinking too of Mrs. Pegues.) Poet, lover and philosopher a strong man of common sense, fierce in the advocation of principle, catholic in taste, a fine gentleman, eloquent, as inflexible in attendance to unadorned duty as he requires of those under him — he stands for a combination of refinement and thoroughness that tran- scends kultur. J. FRANK nORIE. 13

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Dr. Albert Shipp Pegues Dean of Southwestern University It takes a poet to teach poetry, and that is why school boys, who are by virtue of their youthfulness poets, understand the Leather Stocking Tales, whereas sophisti- cated pundits patronize them. A teacher who is good ' ' will provoke from those students wno are capable of hero-worship emulation — not of his eccentricities, as L.r.l Frskine incited how many sentiment- al young lawyers to wear long white gloves into the jury room ; but of his excellencies, as Afcelard drew the eager minded youth of Prance, even of all Europe, to follow hi in, for wisdom ' s sake, from university to university. And if a teacher is a poet, a hero, you will find the poet chronicled in the student talk at the dinner table; if he arouses interest in his subject, as every true poet and hero — the two are ever largely identical — must arouse, there will be violent conflict of ideas. Around the dinner tallies and in the speculative rooms of congregation there are in Georgetown this evening, I dare say, warm discussion of English literature and the man teaching it — even as there were in the sweet days of another generation of collegians. In memory I always think of Professor Pegues as reading to the Class Chaucer or Wordsworth, or any poet. And as he read, we would sometimes look away over the hills stretching to the every luring South, and often we would look at his eyes, eloquent witli the drama and poetry of his words. Had he done nothing, though, but make us listen to his rare reading, he had not been of such worth as a teacher. He made us more than passive listeners; he filled us with a positive ambition to know and to imaginatively comprehend the facts of what is written. No mere dilletante impressions in that instruc- tion ! Here is enthusiasm for a subject born out of a fulness of knowledge of that subject — scholarship that is spiritual — whole scholarship. Whoever failed as many students as Professor Pegues? Yet whoever made so many students sleep with bokes at their beddes heed ? And many who came to get but credits remained to love the high and beautiful. 1 2

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Liberal Arts Faculty WESLEY CARROLL VADEN, A. M., Professor of Latin and Greek. Randolph-Macon College, A. B., 1890; A. M., 1890; Associate Professor Latin and Greek, Ran- dolph-Macon College; Graduate Student Cornell University, 1901; Graduate Student, Yale Uni- versity, 1905; Professor of Latin and Greek, Southwestern University, since 1893. STEPHEN H, MOORE, A. M., Professor of History. Vanderbilt University, A. B., 1894; Columbia University, A. M., 1905; Graduate Student Har- vard University, summer 1904; University of Chicago, summers 1896-97-98-99-1900-03-05; Prin- cipal of Southwestern University Fitting School, 1894-1904; Professor of History, Southwestern University, since 1904; Member of American Historical Association. RUDOLPH WOOD TINSLEY, B. S., Professor of Biolcgy and Geology. University of Virginia, Graduate in Science, 1SS3; B. S., 1898; Graduate Student University of Chicago, summer 1907; Assistant Professor of Science, Washington College, Md., 1893; Pro- fessor of Science, University of New Mexico, 1896-97; Professor of Science, Pennsylvania State Normal, 1899-1902; Acting Professor of Chemistry and Biology, Southwestern Univer- sity, 1903-04; Professor of Biology and Geology, 1904—; Secretary of Faculty, 1913—. l 4