University of Virginia - Corks and Curls Yearbook (Charlottesville, VA)

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COLONEL WILLIAM E. PETERS i yua-

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William E. Peters. Professor of Latin in the University of Virginia, 1865-1902. over like monkish misereres with the initials of bygone sessions; a dim winteris morning with gas-lights still afiame ; a great blackboard closely covered over with the Chalk manuscript of that renowned Latin Syntax tnot yet dressed by Anderson Brothers in the dignity of printerls inky; and the tall professor, with his solemn, earnest mien, and his long forefinger pointed at one of. those adamantine, inscrutable ll, facts of the language ' esuch is the writer's earliest recollection of the subject of this sketch. Bed and breakfast might be successful rivals of learning on other days; but no man, who wanted his Latin diploma, would have been caught out of his seat at half-past seven, or unready to hear then the beginning of that lecture, for which the roll was called with the sober gravity of a Roman augur at eight o'clock. I often please myself in seeking the marks of character in trivial or habitual acts, finding them unconscious revelations of authentic traits of the soul. And so, when I was asked to prepare this little notice of my old professor, my honored colleague, my valued friend, that early morning scene of my student days came back to me, and I said to myself: II There in miniature is the picture of your manf', Sober, earnest, concentrated; with something of a naive simplicity in his unconscious absorption in his work; magnifying his ofliee as teacher of Latin, and making it honourable alike in his own eyes and in the eyes of others, he has followed through all the seven and thirty years of his academic life one unper- turbed orbit, and has followed it like the planets, QN OVAL lecture-room in the old Rotunda, the rude benches all carved ti Ohne Hast, und ohne Rastfl This is not the place for a critical estimate. of Professor Peters as a Latinist, or of his published writings as a grammarian; nor is the writer one who would be fitted at any time to essay the task. Quite devoid of technical qualihcation for it, he has too long been wont to pin his faith to the dogmas of the syllabus to assume now the part of critic toward that guide and companion of his youth. But as he looks back upon those formative days in his intellectual life, he recog- 3