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

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MJI; .4 .0 nizes one lesson, which no one could fail to learn who sat with docile spirit at the old professoris feet: The lesson that the one sacred thing in scholarship is veracity to fact, the one touchstone for opinion and speculation, the solid ground of truth. Even if it must be left to the specialist justly to appraise the scientific value of the work, his old boys can all the better judge the temper in which the man has done the work, and so judging, they one and all bow in honour before that unconquerable homage to truth and duty, that unflagging spirit of fidelity and service. The life of a professor in every college has also its more intimate and human side. Especially in our own University there is a rarely close and cordial inter- course between the professors and their students. Even in the class-room they meet as friends, rather than as master and pupil; as colleagues in the search for learning, rather than as neophyte and sage. If the teacher is a man in whose heart a genuine love for young men has living root, he finds ample verge among them for the growth of healthful and helpful friendships. It has been the peculiar priv- ilege of Professor Peters to elicit and stimulate many such friendships. To his goodness of heart, alike native and genuine, nothing that pertained to the true life of the student has ever seemed alien. It has mellowed and deepened with the advancing years like the rich savor of some sound autumnal fruit. In no member of the Faculty have the students shown more ample and unvarying confidence. To no member of the Faculty have they gone more freely for counsel and for aid. From no one have they met a reception more uniform in generosity and sympathy. In the consultations of the Faculty, no one has exhibited a more stead- fast and cordial regard for the interests of the student, or a more earnest desire to safeguard and promote them. There are few of his colleagues who could not give specific examples from their own personal knowledge of acts of unsolicited kindness, performed with delicate appreciation and generosity. I myself could, if it were fitting, speak of more than one. And I doubt not that the kind heart, which the years have made only truer in its devotion to the University and ten- derer in its care of the young lives around him, holds the unwhispered secret of many another no less courteous and no less kind. Many a good cause has known his helpfulness, which but for his aid and backing might have come to grief. Many a poor wanderer from the path of duty has felt his friendly hand-clasp, and been strengthened by his courageous counsel. A perfectly brave man, a perfectly sincere man, true to his friends, frank to his foes, his life has taught even better lessons than his lectures, and breathes forth a nobler harmony than all the meters of the Romans. There is one other aspect of Colonel Peters's work for the University upon which it is necessary to touch, even in so brief and fragmentary a sketch. The close of the Civil War brought into her service two men, without whose work the school would be to-day far other than it is. Charles Venable and William Peters had been brave soldiers and efficient officers in the armies of the Confederate 4

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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

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States. For four years they had lived in the tented held, shared danger and risked death with the private soldier, and l done things worthy to be written,H where others had perhaps only T written things worthy to be read? This training in a life of action deveIOped in both capacities and apprehensions rare in a professor. This life of daily want and peril, shared with uncomplaining fortitude, had earned for them the unstinted and abiding confidence of their old companions in arms. So-it was that when the Claims of the University were to be laid before the men of Virginia, before those bronzed veterans who for four years had marched and fought and starved with Lee, no voices so potent were to be heard as those of Venable and Peters. In this work they laboured together with perfect sympathy and perfect trust. Before the Legislature and before the people, on the platform and in the press, here were two men who everywhere faced old friends, and could speak for the college with all the authority and infiuence due to their approved patriotism, their known sagacity, their unselfish courage. The work which Colonel Peters did for the school extended itself in this way far beyond the doors of his lecture-room and the precincts of the University. No one without such training and such associations could have done the work he did. Those who know the history of our past will not forget its efficacy. Those who upraise our future will build upon its results. So it is that all who love this Universityestudents and professors, visitors and alumni--rise up this day to do him honour, and follow him into his V01- untary retirement with affectionate and regretful acclaim. Ave et vale, dear ll Old Pete! ll