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

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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

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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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Greeting. two indispensable commodities, ingredients absolutely necessary to sweeten its welcomeeflowing time and a list of all the good things provided for the fastidious taste of the readers for whom the book is intended. Our greeting, we hope, is none the less sincere, although you will have to look for ll A Last Word L' at the end of the book for the noble verse, and instead of a literary bill of fare, we shall merely mention briefly some of the things you 'will not find chronicled in our pages. This kind of salutation is unceremonious, but it has its advantages, among them an opportunity for us to make some of the apol- ogies which editorially we can not make, for all these things we shall leave untold. There are so many patent omissions in what we have concocted, so many epoch-making events, which we should have chronicled and could not, that it would be impossible to recount them all. Beginning with the first days of the ses- sion, we should like to tell how the College Fathers were distressed at the utter absence of the old-time spirit in the Meds and Laws and Academs of 1902, until the bright October days had gone, and the game was played in Lynchburg, and also a ll show ii was played in the great play-house of Charlottesville, hard-by the Imperial; and how the ll whisper yell l' was given, and the charge of the Cop Brigade was made, to be followed immediately by the nery red hand-bills tone of which we have preserved for posterityy, and the fiery mass-meetingv-but time is wanting. Also time would fail us to tell how we all went up to Wash- ington, and how ll Virginia found the Georgeburg knights soft as a woolen string? And then, would we could tell how the long dark winter blew and snowed; but, nevertheless, the Fathers of the Faculty found no cause to weep for the absence of the old-time spirit, for it had begun to circulate as usual, and there was no stopping it, even though at times some good man would stumble and fall and die. We can not pause to tell you how it was; but some died upon East Range, and sometupon the Lawn tand most of these fell about tea-time at Easter, and tottered back to their caves to diey, and some, even while seeking sanctuary, died, all pure and white, upon the Chapel steps. And no one mourned for them, as they should have been mourned. Yet again, when one thinks of the pleasant springtime, it seems nothing less than a plain neglect of duty not to chronicle how the gallant blade of grass was IT HAS been customary for CORKS AND CURLS to greet its readers with 6