fl 1AM B L E S IN OLD COLLEGE TOWN S LDEGARDE RAMBLES IN OLD COLLEGE TOWNS The Path Sweeps up to the Square Central Tower RAMBLES IN OLD COLLEGE TOWNS By Hildegarde Hawthorne Author of " The Lure of the Garden," " Old Seaport Towns of New England," etc. with drawings by John Albert Seaford New York Dodd, Mead & Company 1917 V COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. CONTENTS CHAPTEB PACK I JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE IN CHARLOTTESVILLE 1 II WILLIAM AND MARY 34 III ANNAPOLIS 68 IV PRINCETON 93 V YALE AND NEW HAVEN .... 125^ VI PROVIDENCE AND BROWN UNIVERSITY . 155 VII HARVARD AND CAMBRIDGE . . . .183 VIII WELLESLEY COLLEGE IN WELLESLEY . 205 IX BOWDOIN AND OLD BRUNSWICK . . . 223 X DARTMOUTH AND HANOVER .... 240 XI AMHERST 259 " " XII SMITH AND NORTHAMPTON .... 276 XIII WILLIAMS OF THE MOUNTAINS . . . 293 XIV VASSAR 310 XV WEST POINT 328 XVI CORNELL 347 ILLUSTRATIONS The Path Sweeps Up to the Square Central Tower Frontispiece FACING FACE The Arcades of West Lawn and the Rotunda . . 16 The Main Building Has an Effect of Serene Dignity and Welcome 44 The Centre of All Is the State House ... 80 Fine Old Connecticut Hall Strikes a Note of Peculiar Charm 132 In the Same Row with University Hall Is Manning, with Its Doric Columns 166 The Lofty Fence and Various Superb Gates . . 190 A Charming Path and Steps Lead Down from Stone Hall . . .212 The Severely Architectural Gateway of the Class of 1878 . ....... 230 The Beautiful Old Row 246 Johnson Chapel, with Its Doric Pillars and Delight- ful Square Tower 268 The Old Homestead of Judge Dewey, with Its Col- umns and Doric Simplicity 282 Thompson Chapel, Whose Stone Tower Points Its Exquisite White Finials Above the Arching Elms 300 The Library, Perhaps the Most Beautiful of Vassar's Buildings 318 The Chapel, West Point 336 The Great Library, with Its Uprising Tower . . 352 RAMBLES IN OLD COLLEGE TOWNS RAMBLES IN OLD COLLEGE TOWNS CHAPTER I Jefferson's College in Charlottesville IT was late in April when we decided to begin our little tour of the old college towns here in the East by starting for Virginia. We'd neither of us ever been farther into the Old Dominion than Mount Vernon, which is not so much part of a State as part of history, so the distance beckoned with all the allurement of the new. Then there was the hope of warmth and sun, powerful magnets in this cold, grey, unwilling war spring, as reluctant to mobilise as the most pernicious pacifist in a House and Senate just then struggling with the Conscription Bill. " Shall we take the sea trip and begin with Williamsburg, or go by train and see the University of Virginia first?" I asked Sister, as we studied time-tables and looked at maps and wished the janitor would respond with greater heartiness to the telephoned demands for more heat. Outside the rain drizzled on the -*-!-*- JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE pavements and two trees, visible from the western windows, withheld without a struggle the least impulse toward budding. " Nothing that's wet appeals to me," Sister responded. " I don't really think that spring has got any farther along to the South, but if it has I want to see where it begins. My vote is for the train." Surely one of our modern miracles is the ability we have to change the space of a season from weeks to hours. Surprise is the most volatile and fleeting of possessions the most amazing experiences lose their wonder in the very act of happening. The huge subversion of life that is in progress along the fighting line in Europe becomes the commonplace of daily living in a few weeks, with no more element of surprise than inheres to the customary existence of a broker on Wall Street. What happens happens, and your adjustments are made so instinctively as to be practically imperceptible. We were off. We had marched down the long corridor of the Pennsylvania Station, preceded by a red cap grimly enduring our two suit cases, two umbrellas and one small grip, for he had permitted us to retain none of these things. We had stepped down the flight of stone steps at the farther end into the mighty concourse with its pale and effective decorations by Jules Guerin, JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE those vasty maps that do really hint of the mag- nificent spaces of our Continent, and we had plunged on downward to the level where our train waited, and found our chairs. " Yassam," said the porter, unbending as he found that though women we were not immune to the great American habit. " Yassam, 7 and 9, here they is." He stowed away our baggage, interrupted for a moment by two men in khaki who sought further seats. His eyes brightened, and he smiled upon us: " I done decided to enlist myself," he told us, and so departed, for all we knew, on the first lap of his long journey to the French trenches. In the stealthy way of trains running out of the Pennsylvania we found ourselves gathering speed and presently our eardrums were repelling the pressure of the tunnel with a determination to do or bust familiar to commuting Jerseyites who go right on reading their papers as though a rampant eardrum were something beneath notice, even their innocent children ignoring the contest completely. But we sat with our fingers pressed to our ears as though suddenly shocked by lan- guage quite too dreadful for endurance, and breathed deep when the train emerged into the sunlight feebly struggling through the clouds that hung over New Jersey. Manhattan lay behind us the thrill of a coming JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE vacation, the knowledge that for the next month we should be prospecting among colleges, from Virginia to Maine, swept over us, and we smiled. Only the New Yorker, completely in the control of the huge city as he is, really knows what Getting Away means. I maintain that part of every place is the getting to it. And when it comes to Virginia, which has given to the country so many great presidents and statesmen, then Washington is surely a part of Virginia. And since Thomas Jefferson was the creator of the University of Virginia, or at least its chief parent, in going to Charlottesville you must stop off at Washington or you will not get the whole of the college town. A ramble is as indefinite as a dream, being largely a thing of the spirit, a condition of mind as well as the putting of one foot before another. But long before we arrived in Washington we had found our surprises. The first was a row of plum trees in full flower. Spring, by Jove! That was half -down through New Jersey. The skies were blue before that, the grass ran green beside us; now we passed a cherry in flower! And we pulled out of Philadelphia to the accom- paniment of a perfect chorus of green and pink and lavender, displayed by forest trees beyond the city. :< This is really the thing! " exclaimed Sister. JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE * To walk right up on spring, as it were, from a chill, raw morning without a leaf to this balmy flowering at noon. Look, there's an apple tree in full bloom!" We entered Washington to find it at the very height of its loveliest season. Opposite the Pow- hatan, where we put up, a little park displayed everything used in spring furnishings from apple and cherry to lilac and spirea, nursemaids and rosy babies. We wanted to hear some of the debating going on in Congress. Boys from the very colleges we were to visit would debate there in their turn some day, and the fate of many of them now in those colleges was being settled in the House and the Senate. Were we to tackle a great offensive war, and pour millions of our own men into the bleeding ranks of the allies, or were we going to spend money only, at a pleasing interest rate? When you try to realise what it would be like to get along without words, you find that the things are important even essential. But after you have sat for a few hours listening to the quantities of these very words crowding the dull air in the halls of Congress it seems difficult to be- lieve them of the least use. We went to listen, thrilling with the idea that here we should watch and barken to history in the making. I suppose JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE we did. But the actual impression was decidedly below this mark. " Perhaps nothing seems important when some one else is talking about it," said Sister, as we waited for one impassioned orator to give place to another, hoping that then something really worth while would be said. That is the spell of the place you wait and wait, discounting the boredom of the moment for the hope of what may come next instant. It is the instinct for gambling dormant in even the most cautious. We left Washington next day without having heard the great speech, or even the decisive word. Yet all about us, in these lovely buildings standing amid the bright glory of fresh leaf and flower, the huge machinery of a nation rousing itself to action was in progress. Men in khaki, men in blue, secret service men lost in business suits, moved through the streets. On the green behind the White House, in the late afternoon, young men were drilling, and a bugle spoke to them at intervals with a military summons in its ring- ing throat. Guards waited inside the White House grounds, and women suffrage pickets, with banners, outside the gates. Near us, while we watched the boys drilling, two old men sat on a bench. " I was here in this town when they fired on Fort Sumter," one of them said, " and I was here JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE when the Spanish War came along. Guess this one will have something to show for itself before we get through." " Beats all how these wars keep coming along," murmured the other man, who was even older and whiter. " Nice looking young fellers . . . but no better than what the other wars took." Possibly there, and not in Congress, we heard what we had waited for. It is usually something that you have not anti- cipated that strikes you when you go to a new place. I remember that my first impression of Bermuda was a delightful and pungent fragrance of growing onions. So the first thing that struck us in Virginia was the lettering on two doors at a way station waitingroom. The division was no longer that of the sexes; instead of MEN and WOMEN we read WHITE and COLOURED. "Well, sure enough, we're in the South," I remarked. The three hours' run between Washington and Charlottesville takes you through lovely, diversi- fied country. Broad fields green with winter wheat or a deep crimson where they had been freshly plowed, and fringed with woodlands in new leafage, rolled away on either hand. Through the woods the dogwoods made a white splendour, and a tree we had only seen in carefully tended JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE gardens, the brilliant coral tree, with its close-set pink blossoms covering every branch, lent itself lavishly to the colour scheme, growing solitary or in clumps, by fields and deep in the forests, a wonder and a joy. Charlottesville is in the foothills of the Virginia mountains, that rise beyond in blue waves. An air as caressing as the soft Southern drawl to which we had listened all morning blows over it, and somewhere a clear and lazy river winds past it. Indeed, we had read that " Charlottesville is picturesquely settled on the Rapidan River," and we rather expected to see something like one of those little towns on the upper Thames in Eng- land that string along either bank, buried in flowers and grey with age. But Charlottesville is not in the least like that. We had left to chance the determination of our hostelry: used more to western than southern travel I expected to find the Commercial Hotel as the one dominating factor when it came to bed and board. But as we looked out of the window of our train, approaching the brick station that cuddles under a hill in the lee of the town, we saw a small bus with the name NEW GLEASON blazoned upon it. " That'll do," I decided. " Let's go to the New Gleason." In five minutes we had done so. A rather JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE frayed and battered looking house on the Main Street, opposite an old and unattractive church. I have always hated more than another the word pretentious. It is an ugly word and means an ugly and distressing thing, but it is considerably used in this our country. I felt immediately, however, that it would never be used in relation to the New Gleason. There was nothing what- ever pretentious about the place. It was plain, it was unadorned, it bore the records of elder days in dusky wallpaper and imitation grained wood. The elevator that bore us to our floor moved with a glacier's speed, and the rooms themselves conformed strictly to the worst mid- Victorian ideas of colour and furniture. But the windows were big, and the air that blew into them was sweet and soft. Hot water ran freely into a big bathtub, and the beds were comfortable. The place was not pretentious, but one liked it. One liked it better as one knew it better. The service was effective and friendly and personal. The food was simple and good. Every one in the place was pleasant. Our depression on first coming in vanished. We looked out at the unattractiveness of Main Street with a fresh interest. The town must have more than we could see in that drive from the station and then there was the river, the Rapidan. JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE We left our New Gleason, looked right and left, and turned right. Where would it take us? In a minute we had crossed the bridge over the tracks of the railroad, and the street became greener. Old houses backed away from it, with gardens as a protection between themselves and the passerby; old gardens, running to seed, but full of savour and colour. Suddenly we saw great stone and iron gates before us, with a group of shops The College Book-Store, a drug store, a post office it was, we heard later, the Corners, and the chief rendezvous of a public sort for the students. Many of them, and fine boys they looked, lounged in the doorways and on the ex- tensive flights of steps that recent or fairly recent grading made necessary. We had reached the first college on our list, Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia, and we had done it instinctively. Here were the forty acres bought from John Perry for twelve dollars an acre, his field having been selected from three offered, all within a mile of Charlottesville Court House. To be sure, the forty has been broadened to over five hundred, and the buildings have multi- plied since Jefferson's day. But he it was who evolved the idea of a University from the original scheme to erect a mere academy, he it was who drew the plans, and he who, with the manager of his estate of Monticello, an Irish assistant, JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE Dinsmore, and ten able-bodied workmen, started the building of the college. The story of this start is worth retailing, as it is told by the man- ager, Captain Edmund Bacon, for years Jeffer- son's personal friend and major domo. " As we passed through Charlottesville," he says, " I went to old Davy Isaac's store and got a ball of twine, and Dinsmore found some shingles and made some pegs and we all went to the old field together. Mr. Jefferson looked over the ground for some time and then stuck down a peg. He stuck the very first peg in that building, and I stuck the second. He carried one end of the line and I the other in laying off the foundation of the University." The corner stone was laid in 1817, by the Widow's Son Lodge, Madison and Monroe as- sisting while Jefferson looked on, his noble white head towering over the crowd that had come to attend the ceremonies. The college then was called Center College, but Jefferson had already evolved a plan for its development into a Uni- versity, and helped by the hearty co-operation of his friend, Joseph Carrington Cabell, the plan was adopted by the Legislature in 1818-19, and seven independent schools, under the name of the University of Virginia, were opened to scholars in 1825. Jefferson died the year following, on the Fourth of July, almost at the same hour that JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE saw the death of Adams, but he had the joy of seeing the institution to which he had given such fervid support, and even the actual labour of his hands, in full running order. The place is wonderfully beautiful. It is more cohesive in architecture than any other college group in America, save only Leland Stanford, but it is far lovelier and richer to the eye than the western university, richer with years and the softer, greener climate, with age-mellowed stone and pinkish brick, lovelier because the Greek idea from which it springs is more exquisite than any other. The hard, 'bright beauty of Stanford loses beside the unconscious grace and charm of Vir- ginia. Shaded by giant oaks and elms, with magnolias shining in its old gardens, the long slopes of its rectangular, oblong campus (called The Lawn) terraced down from the Rotunda at one end to the Administration Building on the other, and fenced on either side by the long pillared arcades that are like cloisters in old monasteries in Italy, and follow Tuscan models, the first impression is enchanting and complete. For though there is more, and though we spent hours of delight in wandering here and there, looking into box edged flower-beds, sitting before statues, leaning on the stone balustrades of curving pergolas that gave one far flung views of valley and hill, yet that first glance round The JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE Lawn, with the sunlight playing wonder-tricks on column and wall and ivy hung building, gives the essence and the beauty undiluted and radiant. We loved it in an instant. From the gate where we entered you go past the hospital, a fine building dating from 1900 which is being enlarged, and which is far newer than the academic piles, though the good taste of the controlling spirits of the University has kept every part in complete architectural har- mony. By winding paths and up steps and under a leaf -hung arch we reached The Lawn, which is on the highest part of the old grounds. Young men in khaki were hurrying hither and thither; it looked as though the whole University were preparing for war, and later we were told that more than seven hundred of the students had enrolled in the military organization. Bronze tablets on either side of the entrance into the Rotunda (where now the library is housed) bore the names of Confederate dead sent out from this same spot to fight the Union; were there to be new tablets to the names of Virginia's youth fallen for the Union? " You cannot look at those fine boys and think what may be lying ahead of us and not feel posi- tively sick," said Sister. "In every college we are going to see them, young and eager and joyous, thrilling to this call from their country. Look at JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE all this, and picture those trenches in France and Belgium all in the same world." Above our heads, high in the maple boughs, a cardinal was calling, with that swinging, swishing note, clear and high, the very note of youth. It dropped through the branches like a great drop of blood, flashed in the sun, and was gone. In 1895 a fire destroyed a portion of the Uni- versity. The Rotunda was partly burned, the dome going, and to the north of it, where now the Plaza extends, the Public Hall, used for lec- ture rooms and in the graduating exercises, was completely gutted. The fire threatened the dormitories of East and West Lawn, as those facing on the Lawn are called, but a fortunate change of wind helped the fire fighters, and the oldest part of the college structure was left unharmed. A delightful boy did the honours of the place for us, showing us in and out of the buildings and retailing scraps of history. " There's a drop of twenty feet from the lowest step of the Rotunda to this square here, the New Quadrangle," he said, and softly the southern accent fell upon our ears. " This part is the new group the Academic and Rouss and Mechanical. This south end used to be open once, so from the Rotunda you could look clear out across the country." JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE He took us through the arcades of West Lawn to the Rotunda, chatting as we went. It was a stirring time for the University, with all her sons volunteering. " I reckon our fathers who graduated here wouldn't hardly have thought we'd ever be doing that," he remarked, smiling. "And some of the older men and women aren't rightly reconstructed even yet." From the stone terrace of the Rotunda above the columns and arches we looked southward down The Lawn. Five pavilions on either side separated at regular intervals the one story dormitories where the students lived; these are the houses of the professors, two stories in height, and copied after Doric and Ionic models. Jefferson got his idea from the drawings of Palladio. These por- tions were finished and ready for occupancy by 1823. The roof of the colonnade, balustraded, joins these pavilions, making a long balcony shadowed by the maple boughs. Close to the Rotunda to right and left are the offices of administrators and the Faculty and President's rooms. Until 1905 U. of V. was managed by the Rector, a Board of Visitors, and instead of the President, the Chairman of the Faculty, with only slight executive powers. Then a change was made, and Edwin Anderson Alder- man was given the Presidency. Jefferson's idea -+-15-*- JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE was to make a little Republic of the institution, and here the elective system was first tried. This is what the Founder says on that score: he was writing to George Ticknor, of Boston: " I am not fully aware of the practices of Har- vard, but there is one thing from which we shall certainly vary . . . holding the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and disallowing exclusive application to those branches only which are to qualify them for the particular vocations to which they are destined. We shall, on the con- trary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lec- tures they shall choose to attend, and require elementary qualifications only, and sufficient age. Our institution will proceed on the principle of doing all the good it can, without consulting its own pride and ambition; of letting everyone come and listen to whatever he thinks may im- prove the condition of his mind." There was a statement worthy of the great exponent of Democracy. And well have his plans been fulfilled, and splendidly have they proved themselves. The Rotunda, which was so badly injured in the fire, was restored by McKim, Mead & White, and is one of the handsomest buildings in America, .modelled after the Panthenon in Rome. On Jefferson's last visit to the University, about a month before his death, he sat on the balcony of i o g JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE the then library, and watched the first marble capital being placed on its great column. The capitals had been imported from Italy when the stone of the neighbourhood was discovered to be too friable for the work required. Jefferson allowed nothing but fine material and honest work in his beloved institution. " He sat right over yonder," our student ex- plained, " before that fourth pavilion on the West Lawn. That was the building whose corner stone was laid as Central College, and the first of the row. It was the library for several years, and some folks call it the Old Library to this day but it's been one of the professor houses since 1840, I think; a long time, anyhow. He had come to classify some of the books. Just as soon as the capital was in place he rode off, and that was the last time he got over here." Jefferson is still a presence in the University. Statues and portraits of him are to be found in the main readingroom of the library, in the Academic building, on the New Quadrangle, where he faces Washington across the width of The Lawn. And his name sounds familiarly in the talk of student or professor. The child of his old age loves him still. The statue in the Rotunda was saved from the fire by the struggles of the students, who carried it out of danger, breaking a small portion of the cloak that hangs JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE from the shoulders, we were told, though we could not find the spot. It was made by Gait and was said to be a perfect likeness. The newer statue on the Quad is by Karl Bitter. That of Wash- ington is the original of the one lately presented to England by Virginia. It is easy to spend hours lingering about these old, beautiful buildings and grounds. The Rotunda's central chamber is a magnificent thing, the great dome, painted a pale sky-blue, in which soar white eagles with golden beaks, being sup- ported on a circle of graceful pillars that are indescribably dignified. At one side there is a bust of Poe, whose room, in the West Range, we saw later. The bust is by Zolnay, the same that was so ardently praised by the poet Stedman. Jefferson had intended the Rotunda for the library, and also for use as a chapel, though entire religious freedom is one of the tenets of the University, and there was never a hint of com- pulsory attendance. This gave rise, in narrower days, to a report that the college was atheistical. If you didn't make people worship according to your own idea, you must be wicked to the core, was the prevailing notion. As it happens, the first Y. M. C. A. in the world was established at Virginia, and has always been of immense use- fulness there. It is housed now in a fine great building conforming to the general scheme of -+18+- JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE architecture, built recently, beyond the West Range. There is, in the corner northwest of the Rotunda, a Gothic chapel erected by some com- mittee or other in 1890, a fair example of its style, but utterly out of keeping with the rest of the University. Fortunately it is sufficiently out of the picture not to be distressing. " This terrace must be a wonderful place in a moonlight night," Sister said, as we lingered there, on coming out of the library again. Our guide, with a few hasty directions as to what we must see next, had hurried off to get ready for his drill. " Think of commencement, with all the pretty girls and all these fine young fellows, and this place they must all be engaged before the night is over." On either wing the terraces overlook walled gardens, shadowed by magnolias, sweet with rose and jessamine when June blooms, full now of paler spring blossoms. Vines float and sway from the stone ballustrades, birds sing. Down The Lawn the lovely vistas extend, column and arch and stately portico, warm with the pinkish and ivory tones of rough-cast brick and marble and stone of softer grain but as tender a hue. To the west and east, parallelling the dormitories known as The Lawns, are the second rows of dormitories, called the Ranges. They are like The Lawn, except that for columns they have brick arches. Between JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE are the gardens, separated by brick walls. These walls, fulfilling some charming fancy, are ser- pentine instead of straight, producing an elusively playful effect on the serious beauty of the place that is like the sunlight dancing on the columns. Number 13, in the West Range, is the room where Poe lived while a student, and after his quarrel with his room mate, Miles George, who lived in the West Lawn. Over a small door is this inscription: Edgar Allan Poe's Room MDCCCXXVI Domus parva Magni Poeta? The brick arches are lightly plastered over, after the Tuscan fashion, in these Ranges. Each little home adjoins its neighbour; each is entered through a door opening on the arcade, and each looks out upon a garden through a window in the rear. Occasional passages passing from the Lawns to the Ranges serve to connect the two, giving the passerby fascinating glimpses of greenery it was a place where a poet might be happy, even such a poet as Poe. But his life there, as elsewhere, was stormy and broken by his own wild spirit. On the east side the East Range duplicates the West. They also have their Pavilions, which in older times were mess halls and rallying places. The Literary Societies for which the University -4-20-*- JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE is famous housed in two of the Pavilions, and the Jefferson Society still meets in the central Pavilion of the West Range. The Washington Society now has a small, temple-like building at the north end of the East Range, but once it met in the Pavilion at the south end of that Range. These societies, and the later Columbian, have been and are of great influence in the college life. At one time they were discouraged by the authorities of the University under the conviction that they abused their privileges; but this opposition has long vanished. As the institution has continued to grow other dormitories have had to be found. Dawson's Row, built in 1859, in the arc of a circle, follows the plan of the earlier buildings, but Randall, south of East Range, though of the prevailing brick and stone construction, is two storied and with room for many men. There are other dormitories and a mess hall on Carr's Hill, north of the Rotunda. We, wanting to see the drilling in the amphitheatre, the athletic field with its mighty arc of seats and effect of a Roman circus, turned our backs on The Lawn, and found our way to the back (really the front) of the Rotunda. Two vast flights of steps lead from it, the first ending at the Plaza, where once the Public Hall or Annex, stood, the second sweeping down to the street that separates JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE this older portion of the grounds from the athletic field immediately adjoining, where tennis courts and tracks are laid out, overlooked by the Fayer- weather Gymnasium, a handsome, up-to-date structure, with a Corinthian Portico, the columns and capitals of solid stone, conforming in its architecture to the general scheme, and containing everything proper to its purpose. To the left of the Gym, crowning a hill-slope, is the beautiful home of the President, close crowded by fine trees. Our way lay on past the Gym, up a charming roadway. Many other people were going the same way, and many of these were girls, pretty girls too, with Southern voices and alluring ways of moving and laughing. Down in the roadway marched companies of the college men, not all in khaki, since all the uniforms had not arrived the rush of student enthusiasm was too eager for the University to keep abreast of it in her preparations. There is hardly so moving a sight on earth as that of the young and joyous running to arms in the service of their country. Hundreds upon hundreds, here they came, in a long, swinging stride, active, straight, vivid. " One, two, three, four," the sharp count rang along the lines. In through the arched entrances to the Stadium they wheeled, line by line. And we followed, to group -i-22-e- JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE ourselves on the low, broad step-seats of the Stadium, and watch them march and counter- march, turn, stop, rush off at double quick, now in long lines across the noble field, now four by four. And the hour flew by for us who looked as quickly as for the training boys. " That's my brother, that one next the end," a tall, dark-eyed girl remarked to Sister. " Aren't they doing well? " Her eyes shone as the lookers on applauded a difficult evolution. " Almost all the men are in it don't they look nice in khaki? I reckon those who haven't joined feel pretty bad, don't you? But of course some just couldn't." "Do you want him to go to war?" asked Sister. The girl glanced at her. " Why, I don't know," she said, slowly. " Seems natural for a Virginian to go to war. ..." They marched the lads back and disbanded them on the Plaza before the Rotunda, company by company. Off they ran, down the steps, across the road, laughing, shouting "D'you see me get all balled up? . . ." ' Tom'll never learn to keep step. ..." "Wish those uniforms would get here . . ." their gay voices rang through the evening, their feet clattered, they shoved each other about or hurried, linking arms. " The South seems to be turning out a pretty JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE good line in sons," I remarked, as we watched them scatter. Up there in the Rotunda, many years ago, Lafayette had been given a dinner, after a parade through the streets of Charlottesville remarkable for pomp and colour. To-day Joffre was in Washington, with Lafayette's name on his lips; once again Frenchman and American were to fight side by side. We walked slowly down The Lawn toward Administration. Built as it is, on the slope of the hill, you enter on the second story. One flight below is the parquet of the auditorium, one flight up the gallery. Here the college exer- cises are held, and portraits of the founders dec- orate the walls, notably one of Jefferson. In the lobby is the bronze memorial tablet commem- orating the fire and the restoration of the old buildings, with the building of the three new ones, all by the same architects. The heading to the statement is the line "E'en in our ashes live our wonted fires." But, as Sister said, that is not meant to be taken literally! Administration and the two buildings that flank it, the Scientific and Mechanics, are joined by curving pergolas that give on the charming view of the hill and valley, on the great oaks that mark Virginia so nobly, and on glimpses of the town. The twenty years elapsed since the build- JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE ings were finished have mellowed brick and stone to the look of age the century that has gone since the first corner stone was laid seems to have passed over each fa$ade facing in upon The Lawn the harmony is complete. Only the trees are young. It was Jefferson's idea that the classic severity should not be softened by a tree, and for long The Lawn was unshaded. Then locusts were planted, and finally the two double rows of maples that now stand there. Fine, well-grown trees, full of lusty life and beauty. The honour system has always been in vogue in the University of Virginia. A man's word is unquestioned by the Faculty. Very few are the cases where this trust has been misplaced. A student puts his signature to his examination papers stating that the work has been honestly done. In the rare instances when there has been cheating the Faculty has never taken action. The students took up the matter. There is no rough handling; the offender is "simply made aware of the existence of a strong public sentiment which makes it impossible for a man to stain his honour and remain a student of the University of Virginia." " This seems to me a spot where one would be glad to have one's son," said Sister. " Here, it seems to me, is the soul of Jefferson incarnate." JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE The sun was setting as we made our way back to the New Gleason, past the Corners, where students crowded for the evening mail. Along the quiet street mocking-birds sang in the old gardens, a tangle of music, silver-sweet. Then we crossed the railway bridge and enchantment fell away. But in the hotel we had a supper that was worth eating, with corn pone and ham and greens and hominy and coffee that was comfortingly clear and strong. The coloured boy who took our orders was deeply interested in seeing that we got just what we wanted, and begged us to take a little more of each dish. He even insisted on bringing poached eggs to augment what he con- sidered too slight an order. And we ate them. We couldn't have hurt his feelings by leaving them. Afterwards we chatted with the young lady at the desk. * You ought to see Monticello," she told us. " No, you couldn't walk it I did once, but never again. It's only about three miles to the gate, but after that it's miles and miles. But it makes a nice drive, and the woods are fine now. They've been talking of buying it for the Nation, like Mount Vernon . . . it's a mighty pretty place." We asked her whether there were any special JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE haunts in town that attracted the college boys, but she appeared to know of none. '* The Uni- versity holds about everything the students want," she thought. " Of course they go to the Corners, and visit folk in town, but we don't see much of them. I reckon the men who are in Virginia University are there to work, not to play 'round," she concluded. We decided to drive to Jefferson's home the following afternoon. And went again to our informant for news of where to spend the morning. 6 You might go and see the college cemetery and the old Confederate burying ground next it, and so up to the Observatory. That will make a nice walk," she told us. A soft, warm morning, with a silvery haze over the blue hills and veiling the broad fields that lie along the river. Before going to the cemeteries we decided to see a little of Charlottesville. Though the first impression of the town is not attractive, the place is really charming. Small and old, surrounded by farm-lands, the farm houses built on the crests of the swelling hills, and almost invariably surrounded by a group of splendid oaks, the streets merge into country roads almost imperceptibly. That is, those which don't end in an impasse. For many a fine broad street we took led only to some house in fine grounds JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE barring further progress; and we trapesed back the way we came, but contentedly, for beautiful trees shaded our way and there were unending views across the valleys, with their rich crim- son soil or new, vivid green. Many a splendid Colonial house still stands in the old town, with Greek portico and stately pillars. There are many houses of brick, almost none of wood. But we couldn't find the river! " Here is a town 'picturesquely situated on the Rapidan,' and we can't see hide nor hair of a stream," I complained. " Yet it seems idiotic to go up to a citizen and ask him for a river." But we had to. We walked here and we walked there, and not so much as a gleam of running water rewarded us. He was old and very Southern in appearance, and he enjoyed talking. " The Rapidan? Why, it's some ways along, ladies." He directed us minutely, and then asked us what we thought of the war. " We've got to get those Prussians beaten," he began. " I fought through the war here and I don't care for any more fighting, but it looks like it has to be done. You-all visited the University? " Thrilling with delight at the you-all we told him we had. " Our blood and sweat's gone into it," he said JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE slowly, taking off his broad-brimmed hat and mopping his forehead to give point to the state- ment. "It's a fine place; but the war set us back a whole lot." He was explaining to us the policy of the Central Powers when we broke away for time was flying, though no one in the South acts as if this were a fact. We found that the river itself, for all the hasty significance of its name, moved with a casual slowness under the bridge which we attained at last. Willows bent above the stream, fields full of buttercups spread back from it, and on surrounding hills picturesque pines aided the oaks in the scheme of decoration. While we sat at the edge of the water several drivers passed us, on their way to town from the country districts. Not one but held the lines over a horse showing traces of blood and breeding. Virginia loves horses, and here, where the great lover of a good horse lived so much of his life, a fine animal or none at all seems to be the rule. Jefferson did a great deal to improve the breed in this part of the state, and though he never raced a horse, he loved to drive a fast trotter or ride a steeple-chaser. For our drive to the old home of the statesman we secured a charming bay, and took turns with the lines. The red-dust roads were firm and smooth, the trees continuous, and once past the JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE lodge at the entrance to Monticello, the drive swept upward to the top of the sugar loaf hill in gracious curves, with constant outlooks over the country below. " I cannot imagine an easier job on earth than learning to love Virginia," declared Sister. " Just look at those sheets of dogwood under the pines! And hear the cardinals ! And remember that over this delightful road Jefferson used to ride every day to visit his beloved University. Bad weather, unless it was very bad indeed, couldn't stop him. The tall, gallant, happy man, who was said to go singing and humming about his work, and never to be idle, and who watched over every detail of his estate with such exquisite care. It is good to know such things have happened, and it is good to look around here and see the relics of it, kept so beautifully. Virginia makes you feel at home. ..." Jefferson's classic taste found full expression in the house he built, with its domed roof and columns, placed so well among the trees and gardens on the hilltop. A couple of youths on horseback, probably students, were idling along, chatting and pointing. This was the sort of ramble a boy could profit by. The man who had built this house, with its fine, reserved beauty, was a heritage to every student in the University. They had their literary societies and their Greek JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE letter societies, and they had too this influence left behind by a great, simple and generous spirit. It is with emotion that you look about you at Monticello. " Everything best in American tradition meets here," I remarked, as we drove slowly away. "And tradition is worth while it must give a noble quality to those it touches as it must touch every boy who is educated here." Our time was drawing to an end, and we had not yet visited the college burial ground. But the afternoon was only just waning as we returned, our bay still full of playfulness, and sauntered off toward the University, and the little walk under the oaks that led to the quietest of grave- yards. White and blue periwinkle carpeted the ground under the cedars and the ivy grew thick over the ancient stones and simple marble crosses. Here was nothing of pomp and ostenation. A few old English tombs with carven sides and tops. An urn on a column, half hidden in green leaves, simple rounded headstones with names great in the story of Virginia a place now of singing birds, who were nesting every- where. Beyond, under oaks, with the wild flowers growing over them, was the place where the Confederate soldiers rested. A bronze figure in -1-31-*- JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE the centre commemorated these heroes of the lost cause, lying at the very foot of Mt. Jefferson. Little paths led among the graves. A tender loveliness brooded throughout the space. Above, at the top of the little mountain, was the Observatory, containing the great Clark refractor. It is called after its chief donor, McCormick of Chicago, and is very complete. Vanderbilt also gave a large sum toward its building. Jefferson had selected the site, but was unable to install more than an apology for an observatory at the time. It is easy to understand that neither money nor social standing cut much of a figure in this great and growing University. There is nothing to spend money on; the woods and fields, the quiet stream, the mild excitements of the Corners are all that call to the student, and none of these asks money. No honourary degrees have been given by the University, which confers its honours only for work done. Character is what counts, and every boy who enters feels that in the first week of his life there. Athletics are eagerly followed, and the publications of the students show real enthusiasm and marked literary ability. There is nothing slack, nothing wasteful. As we walked homeward to the hotel, round by way of the tennis courts, we heard some of the JEFFERSON'S COLLEGE young fellows giving the college yell: a good yell, and reaching far: WAH-HOO-WAH WAH-HOO-WAH U-NI-V-VIRGINIA HOO-RAH-RAY HOO-RAH-RAY RAY-RAY U-V-A -i-33 CHAPTER II William and Mary RICHMOND is only an hour from Williamsburg, and I don't believe any one ever had the heart to go through Richmond without stopping off if there was even the faintest shadow of an excuse. Naturally the students from William and Mary come to Richmond for contact with the great world for though Williamsburg is one of the oldest places in America it is as quiet as it is old, and the college boy often demands more of life than age and repose; so Sister and I felt that it was decidedly necessary to get a look at Richmond before continuing down the James River to what was, for a brief time, the old capital of Virginia. Richmond has a Roman proclivity for hills and a truly Southern passion for flowers and trees and parks. Its up-and-downness and its green- ness are as marked as its historic associations with Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. Most of our elder cities can lay some claim to one or two of these men. But Richmond gathers them all in, and many another. Here they lived or here they WILLIAM AND MARY met in mighty converse. There they died or there they fought. Old church or beautiful home, public building and tomb, stand as witnesses. To the Southerner his history is real and beloved. In many an old New England town you will hardly find a soul to speak of the past, to direct you to some relic of vanished deeds or to remember the names that wrote themselves into its story. Not so in Virginia. The Revolutionary picture yet holds its vivid colour, and as for the Civil War, we began, before we had stayed many days in the Old Dominion, to listen for the echo of its drums and the sound of its marching. '* We're doing pretty well," said an ex-Con- federate soldier who walked about with Sister and me in the picturesque graveyard of the church, St. John's, built in 1741, where Patrick Henry made his famous " Give me liberty or give me death " speech. " We're doing all right now; but that war we fought 'bout forty years or so ago set us back a long way." Forty or sixty years, what matter? It was nearer forty days to his memory. Richmond, with one other city I know, Paris, has charm. It is a totally different variety of charm, but it's there. You feel it immediately, and it grows more imminent with every day that passes, capturing you as charm always does. There are many reasons for finding Richmond WILLIAM AND MARY beautiful and attractive; Capitol Square alone, with the Capitol designed of course by Thomas Jefferson, is sufficient. But that plea of the Elizabethan poet to " Love me still, and know not why, So have you the same reason yet to dote upon me ever" finds ready answer in Richmond. You ad- mire the city for its noble, tree shaded streets, its Colonial buildings, dignified and gracious as some dame of high degree, its far-flung views of winding river and characteristic country; you like its habit of leisure that is neither lazy nor shiftless, and your heart opens to its citizens, who make you feel that Richmond, being their home, is yours also. But behind or within these compelling reasons is an undefined and powerful quality more compelling still, and which is simply the charm. We suffered a severe disappointment in the city, none the less. We had had, to be sure, a taste of corn pone in Charlottesville. But it had arrived late in the meal and our enthusiasm was over. We wanted more. We asked, wherever we went, for corn pone. The marble magnificence of the Jefferson knew it not; the little lunch rooms on Broad Street refused it; it did not occur at any WILLIAM AND MARY meal served in those homes where we were, other- wise, happy guests. " Can we have some corn pone? " Sister asked it of the friend who was giving us luncheon in the Hotel Richmond. Any other day, possibly. But not that day. It was not on the bill, to the waiter's regret. Then Sister told how she made it at home, and how good it was. " But I did want to eat the real Southern pone, and maybe get some hints as to how it's made. I've got the cornmeal, beautiful, golden yellow meal that I send away for " Both of us noticed the extraordinary expression that swept the face of our host. It was fleeting, but in it mingled a world of protest, of wonder, a shuddering horror, a frantic effort at concealment, with other to us unexplainable emotions. " It's no use," we said, " something terrible has happened. What is it? " At last we got it out of him. Yellow cornmeal! It seems that yellow cornmeal is only fit to feed to horses. No Southerner ever touches it. White, white as the sand on India's coral strand, it must be, sweet, water ground, so that it is never sub- jected to heat till it's made into pone, an ethereal, exquisite substance, with a flavour the moment when a Frenchman would have kissed the tips of his fingers and sent that kiss afloat with an in- WILLIAM AND MARY comparable gesture had arrived. The Southerner met it differently: " I reckon you No'therners don't rightly under- stand what corn pone is," he concluded. So far as Richmond goes, we never had a chance to find out we only discovered what it wasn't. But we must be on our way to Williamsburg and how to go? " What you want to do is to take the boat down the river to Jamestown, and then get across to Williamsburg," we were told. And the beauty of that trip was extolled in no uncertain phrases. Past famous Westover and Brandon, and Shirley, ancestral home of the Carter family, the boat would take us. Hour after hour the green and lovely banks would unroll as the river swept along. And perhaps we should find something to take us to Williamsburg at Jamestown; some- times there was an automobile to be hired, more often not. " But they'll get you over some way," we were assured. It sounded tempting. To be sure, when we discovered that the boat left at an hour which meant breakfast at five, my ardour fell about eighty-five per cent, though Sister was still strong for the trip. And then fate stepped in. The boat only ran every other morning, and it didn't -+38-*- WILLIAM AND MARY run our morning. So we took the highly con- venient train. The conductors on Southern railways have the manners, and many doubtless the blood, of the F. F. Vs. They take your ticket from you as though it were a privilege of no mean kind to accept the offering. They will not permit you to carry your suitcase an inch, and they are solicitous that you should find seats on the shady side. " It gives you a sort of Alice in Wonderland feeling," sighed Sister, as we settled ourselves. " Is the subway really in the same world? " The country, in its springtime heyday, flowed past, cultivated tracts alternating with marshes starred with wild flowers. Splendid oaks led the processions of the trees, topping the slight rises, crowned with farmhouses, and standing in stately groups where the fields opened out. Pine and dogwood contended for the dominating note of dark or white, making a Japanese effect of form and contrast. Occasionally we got a touch of local colour in a negro driving a two-wheeled cart drawn by bullocks, or a group of pickanninies watching the train go by. " All out heah for Williamsburg," observed the brakeman, softly but clearly. " Let's check our bags and walk over to the village and look over the land before we decide where to go," I proposed. "Maybe we'll like -i-39-f- WILLIAM AND MARY one hotel better than another, and anyway we want to be fairly close to the college." There was a peculiar contraption in the station of the penny in the slot variety. You put a dime in one place and got a key and that unlocked a door and into the space beyond you slipped your baggage, locked the door and departed. But what if you lost the key? A lovely country road, grass and buttercup edged, drew away from the station between walls and fences hung with vines, wistaria among them, hanging its pale lavender tassels in riotous pro- fusion over rail or ancient brick, and spreading broadcast its delicate fragrance. Birds sang wildly in the golden sunlight. A little way we walked and found ourselves on what was evidently the village green. It was a solid golden sheet of buttercups edged with mighty trees, under whose boughs nestled old houses of brick and of wood, standing within gardens as old as themselves. Across from us a long, grey, rambling, delightful haphazard building marked the eastern boundary of the green Court Green. A sign on this building informed us that it was the Colonial Inn. " There is our home for the next few days," Sister said. " Nothing shall move me from that position." An amazing number of men in khaki were WILLIAM AND MARY crossing hither and thither, and crowding the long and wide Duke of Gloucester Street on which our Inn faced. Were they all martial college youths? No. These were regulars, no mistaking that fact. We made our way into the office, but no one was at the desk. Khaki filled the room. We seemed to be the only women in the world! A world of soldiers. " Let's wander about and see if we can find just a plain ordinary man to ask questions of," I proposed. But just then a youth, anxious inquiry in his eyes, rushed up to us. We wanted a room, and we wanted lunch. " Come into the library," he begged us, " and I'll see what we can do." We followed him into an adorable old room, with a fire of logs crackling on the hearth, books in cases round the walls, comfortable old chairs drawn round the hearth, quaint ornaments on shelf and mantelpiece. A spinet stood in one corner, a huge bunch of daffodils shone in another. We exchanged a look of rapture. ' There's a regiment of Marines in town," our guide informed us, "more than six hundred, and the band's quartered with us. But I reckon we can find a room for you two ladies somehow." He disappeared. " So that's who they are! Uncle Sam's Marines WILLIAM AND MARY -They go first!" remarked Sister. "What larks! Probably there will be a parade. I wonder where the rest of the six hundred, who aren't the band, are put up. This seems to be the one place in town." We found out later. They camped in their little dog tents on the University Athletic Field, rows and rows of khaki shelters that didn't look big enough to cover a large-sized Newfoundland, let alone a Marine, all of whom seemed to run to extra sizes as men go. Now our host entered, and bade us welcome with a truly Southern grace and distinction. Yes, we could have a room, and yes, it should look out on Court Green for we wanted that. Those buttercups ! So we surrendered the keys that guarded our suitcases, and went in to lunch. The long, low room was filled with officers and their wives, besides, at one table, the band in its blue uniform. A gay sight. Rather overpowered looking black waiters hurried about, doing their best. Probably the Inn had not had to meet such an emergency since the days of the Jamestown Exposition, but it was standing the test gallantly. We were served promptly, and always with that effect of being personally and attentively looked after that kept its pleasant palpability about us throughout our Virginian visit. WILLIAM AND MARY Before delivering our letter of introduction from a friend in Richmond to President Tyler of William and Mary we thought it better to go wandering through the old town itself, and get hold of the local colour. Rain clouds were be- ginning to pile up, and we wanted to do our tramping before the weather had a chance to show what water could do with the red soil of the roads. Williamsburg is constructed on a simple plan. There are three long, broad streets running east and west, seven or eight or more, shorter and not so wide, crossing at right angles. The names savour of the days when the English settled Virginia; in New England the towns changed their English names after the Revolution, but conservative Virginia kept hers. So besides the Duke of Gloucester there are King, Queen and England streets among the names. A small guide book told us to begin our pilgrimmage at the Inn, which we couldn't very well help doing. Turning to the left, we first went up the street to the site of the old capitol, on a circular green, the street bifurcating and sweeping round to right and left. Now nothing but the stone foundations of the fine building that stood here in all the glory of Colonial days remains to gaze upon. We sat down on one of the stones and looked down the WILLIAM AND MARY street to the college campus and buildings, veiled in trees. About us historic interest was piled high. From 1699, when the capital was moved to Williamsburg from Jamestown, to 1779, when it betook itself to Richmond, the laws of Virginia were made here, and here the governors held state. The word Capitol was used for the first time in America for the Williamsburg building, built in the form of an H, of brick and stone. Indeed, there are a number of firsts in this dreamy old town, as we found later. It was in this capitol that Patrick Henry, in 1765, on May 30, denounced the Stamp Act, and presented his resolutions. Eleven years later the Virginia Convention passed resolutions urging the Continental Congress to declare independence. A fiery and energetic group of men kept Williams- burg in the very front of the nation's history during all the long struggle for freedom. It was no sleepy college town in those days with its eyes on the past, as it is to-day, but the wild- beating heart of Virginian patriotism. Round about this ancient site are some of the oldest and finest of the Colonial houses that give the town its character. Untouched, perfectly pre- served, lived in to-day as throughout the long years, these brick or wooden houses, with their dormer windows, stand within their walled gardens, brick paths leading from gate to grace- 1 WILLIAM AND MARY ful doorway, and on each door shines a bright brass knocker and plate. Here looking like a New England house is the home of Peyton Randolph, first President of the Continental Congress, and a short way further on Basset Hall, at the end of a long lane of trees, spreads its noble proportions. Here lived Tyler, later President of the United States. Once the famous Raleigh Tavern stood where now a little shop faces on Duke of Gloucester Street. " It must have been a scrumptious sight in the old days here," Sister said. " Isn't there a picture in the Metropolitan Museum that shows the old church here, Bruton Parish Church, with stately men in full-bottomed coats and cocked hats, afoot and on horseback, greeting each other and the beautiful highborn ladies sitting in a coach? We must see that church." But I was not to be outdone with this display of cultured knowledge. "Did you know," I asked coldly, "that Tom Moore, of distinguished fame as a poet and a lover, once stayed right there in Basset Hall? And that there he wrote his poem to the Firefly, never having seen fireflies till he got here, on a night of May?" " There's one comfort," responded Sister. " Between us we know everything! " I had found the song in the library of the Inn WILLIAM AND MARY that very day, but I didn't think this was worth telling. Instead I murmured the first verse: "At morning when the earth and sky Are glowing in the light of spring, We see thee not, thou humble fly, Nor think upon thy gleaming wing/' " No one would dare write a stanza like that nowadays," I mused. " Yet how sweetly pretty." * The day when the sweetly pretty was popu- larly acclaimed is over," agreed Sister. " Even a girl needs more than that to make her a success. But is there not more to be seen? " " Thomas Jefferson announced many years ago that ' The only public buildings in the Colony worthy of mention are the capitol, the palace, the college and the hospital for lunatics," 1 said I. "All are gone except the college. At least, the hospital was rebuilt after 1885, this foundation remains of the capitol, and on the site of the palace now stands the Whaley School, used by the college to train its scholars in the art of teaching. Yet there are things worth seeing." " What a Hun fire is," Sister remarked. " I believe Jefferson criticised the proportions and ornaments of the capitol, but a minister who lived here, the Rev. Hugh Jones, announced that it was the 'best and most commodious Pile of its WILLIAM AND MARY Kind that he ever had seen or heard of.' In 1704 it was the largest and handsomest building anywhere in the Colonies, so they say. And when it was first burned down, about forty years later, the governor denounced the act as ' the horrid machinations of desperate villains instigated by infernal madness.' Anyhow, it is vanished, with not a wrack behind, unless you count this pattern on the grass, and the monument here." The Association for the Preservation of Vir- ginia Antiquities has set up this monument, with its interesting inscription, telling briefly the more famous incidents in the life of the capitol. Here, besides the speech of Henry, that according to some opinions of that time did as much to bring about the Revolution as any other single factor, occurred the various landmarks along the road to independence marked by Dabney Carr's Resolution to form a committee to confer with similar committees from the other colonies, a first step toward the ultimate union of the states, and later the Declaration of Rights, the work of George Mason, followed a few days afterwards by the adoption of the first written constitution of a free and independent state ever framed. Not far from the capitol used to stand the old prison, described by a writer of the day as "a strong, sweet prison." Here the wild companions of Black Beard the pirate were confined, and from WILLIAM AND MARY here they went to their execution. Certainly, history in many phases has been made on this little piece of earth. We sauntered up the street toward the college, bewitched by the old houses on the way, almost every one of them an exquisite example of the best period of the eighteenth century's con- ception of home architecture. A little way beyond the Inn a queer, octagonal building, with a sharp- pointed roof, turned out to be the Powder Horn, where powder was stored in Colonial days. When the news of Lexington came to Williamsburg, the then governor, Lord Dunmore, had the powder taken away in the middle of the night and shipped aboard a ship lying at Yorktown. The people of the town were furious, and made a great demonstration, led by Patrick Henry. So furious that the governor followed the powder, and was never again seen in Virginia. The Horn, or Magazine, was built under Governor Spotwood in 1714, and probably be- cause of its dangerous contents, never did catch fire. It is practically as it was then, but now is a museum for antiquities, under the protection of the same Virginia Society whose ministering hand has done so much to restore or to preserve what is old and valuable in the State. The street, as we drew nearer the centre of the town, grew livelier and livelier. Not only was WILLIAM AND MARY it filled with the khaki of the Marines, but also crowded with darkies in all sorts of ramshackle rigs where they weren't afoot. Baskets and mani- fold chatter accompanied them. It was market day, in fact. Gay bandannas decorated many of the women's heads, and black and smiling young- sters in print dresses raced about, far more silent than their elders, after the fashion of pickanninies. Vegetables made heaps of colour, pushcarts loaded with candies, oranges and other sellable things were steered about dexterously by young men who shouted gleefully to each other or to the women. 6 You-all haveter quit this f oolin' and git to the war soon," they called, vastly amused at the idea. Williamsburg was settled in 1632, and then called the Middle Plantations, being half-way between Yorktown and Jamestown, in the middle of the peninsula. Whenever there has been fighting on the Continent, Williamsburg has seen her full share of it. " We've surely known what war means here," as one of the ladies said to me later on, " its scars are with us to this day. And are we to have our dear ones taken from us again? Why, armies have marched back and forth over this town ever since Bacon's Rebellion. . . ." In her face was that look of indefinite sadness that is found so often in the faces of Southern women past their first youth a heritage perhaps, and, who knows, a prophecy maybe? The care- WILLIAM AND MARY less negroes laughed at the idea. But the woman of the South can never laugh at the threat of war. Can you imagine a Belgian laughing at it, even generations hence? We stopped for a moment to look at a small sulky building, hiding behind a new shop, the old Poor Debtors' prison, and then crossed the street to look at the ancient Court House, backing on Court Green, said to have been designed by Christopher Wren. The fine sweep of stone steps that leads to the porch was imported from England when the building was erected in 1769. It is a simple and satisfactory house of red brick with white facings, beautiful in its proportions, with a cupola balanced by two chimneys, and a pointed, overhanging pediment making the roof for the porch. In enumerating the buildings that were worthy of mention Jefferson overlooked one of the most beautiful of the whole country, Bruton Church, built in 1715, succeeding an earlier structure dating between 1632 and 1665, and probably the oldest church building in America. It is of beautifully toned old brick, with a white, octagonal and pointed wooden tower superim- posed on the square brick foundation. The body of the church forms a cross. A brick wall sur- rounds it and the graveyard in which it stands, a lovely place, reminding you of many an old Eng- WILLIAM AND MARY lish graveyard, even to the blooming hawthorn trees and ivy that shade and soften the tombs. Children were playing here, running in and out among the square headstones or the carved tombs, calling to each other in the soft Southern voices that are an unmixed delight to the ear protest- ingly accustomed to the raucous shrieks of New York's younger element. The dates on the headstones reach back far into the seventeenth century, and several bear titles. One recorded that it was " Sacred to the Memory of Lady Christina Stuart, Daughter of John Stuart, 6th. Earl of Traquier, and Wife of Hon. Cyrus Criffen, born in Peebleshire, Scot. 1751, Died in Virginia 1807." The sides and top were carved, and the sculptured arms still witnessed to the pride of birth that made Virginia as strongly aristocratic as the old land from which she drew. Another tomb summed up a brief life briefly. " Born 1787, Mar. 1808, Died 1816." Close by is the Whaley tomb, with its pathetic inscription: Matthew Whaley lyes Interred here Within this Tomb upon his Father dear Who departed this life the 26th. of September 1705 Aged Nine Years Only child of James W. and Mary his wife. WILLIAM AND MARY This is the child for whom his mother left the money to build a free school as a memorial. The lady herself, so desolately bereft, went back to England, where she died. Mary Curtis' children are also buried here, close to the church. The church has passed through various vicis- situdes, and at one time was considerably altered inside by tasteless renovators, but in 1906 it was restored to practically its ancient condition. It is charming, with its rows of mahogany pews, and the stately governor's pew opposite the pulpit, on a railed-in dais, a great carved chair overhung with the Spots wood canopy, a strong note in the tranquil beauty of the place. Here through the generations the same service has been held, the same prayers spoken, here the vested choir has sung hymns older than the country in which it stands. We listened, next morning, to the prayer in time of war, and thought upon the days when that same prayer had stirred anxious hearts in the pews where now we sat. During the ante-war days of the Revolution the governor, Lord Dunmore, and the members of the House of Burgesses moved up into the gallery, ousting the college students, for their lack of popularity persisted even within the church. We were shown the three Communion Services, one given by Jamestown, another by George III., -H-52-i- WILLIAM AND MARY bearing the legend of the Prince of Wales, Honi Soit qui mal y pense, the third the gift of Lady Gooch, wife of Governor Gooch. This is dated 1686. All are exquisitely fashioned. The coloured sacristan pointed out to us, on Palace Green, the Whaley School, and told us that we should find several old houses worth our while : ' You go on roun' this heah way," he said, " and you'll find the house where Geo'ge Wash- ington lived; the Geo'ge Wythe House. And over yander's where the first theatre in this yer country used to stand." That was the theatre where Miss Johnston's " Audrey " was supposed to have played. Wash- ington was fond of attending the performances given there in the gay old days when Williams - burg worthily maintained her position as capital of the colony. A pleasant stroll across the Green from the Wythe House it was. We sat down among the buttercups and tried to reconstruct the picture. What a different scene from those that stir the imagination in the old Puritan towns of New England! But Williamsburg had its grim reminder that the life of man is sad. Leaving the church we crossed Duke of Glou- cester Street and took one of the cross streets, wishing to see the hospital (the first for the insane -+53-*- WILLIAM AND MARY on this side of the Atlantic) that had been spoken of as very fine and well run. A guard stood at the gate, and seeing the numerous patients walk- ing and idling about the pretty grounds, we made no attempt to enter. The wild and sullen looks of the women who stared out at us took away the faintest desire to get a closer view, and we turned into a street that seemed to lead past the end of the long building. But we wished we had not taken it, for it ran close under the wall of the men's quarters, and as the day was warm they were all out on the long, iron-barred verandas, or sitting at the open windows, and our presence drew shouts of inquiry, which added point to the strange medley of sound that rose and fell in endless waves. " Let's turn back my knees are shaking," whispered Sister. The road stretched on ahead, revealing no turning that would take us away from the sorrowful place. It was better to turn back. An old man, at a window on the second story, appealed to us in a clear, insistent voice: " If they ask after me, be sure to tell them I'm not here," he begged. We hurried on, but he called again, with greater anxiety, " Girls, if they ask for me, tell them I'm not here." WILLIAM AND MARY " Surely," I called back. " We'll tell them." He seemed satisfied, and reaching the corner, we left the dim confusion of those stricken beings behind us. "Well, we've seen the frame to the college," said Sister, " and it is various. Let us get to the college itself." William and Mary is the second college in seniority in the United States, Harvard alone being older. King William III. and Queen Mary gave it its charter in 1691 its colours, the orange of Nassau and the white of York, witnessing to its royal lineage. It is the only college in America, if not in the world, to have arms given by the English College of Heraldry. The arms of most colleges draw from some donator, some patron of wealth and power. William and Mary's are her own alone. On a golden shield a silver college building, with a sun above, shedding its rays below, and at the bottom the date of the actual beginning of the institution, 1693. But though this Virginian college was not the first in existence, it was first in many ways. The desire for a college had been stirring in the colony since 1619, and though the Indian massacre of 1622 checked all chance of its building for many years, the idea persisted, waiting only a favourable opportunity. WILLIAM AND MARY First it was, to get a charter from the Crown, first to have a full Faculty, and first to award medals for collegiate prizes through the generosity of Lord Botetourt. It was also first in having a Greek letter fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, now one of the great societies in all the larger colleges and universities. It also first inaugurated a system of elective studies, the honour system, and the first schools for foreign languages and muni- cipal law, these latter under the urging of Thomas Jefferson, who was one of the many distinguished graduates of the college, and who got several of his ideas for his own University from his Alma Mater. Two other firsts may be recorded: here political economy was first taught, and here the first school of history was founded. Something of achievement, certainly. At the foot of the Duke of Gloucester Street a tall iron gateway marks the entrance to the campus, though there is no fence or wall about the grounds. These are triangular in shape, well grassed, with fine trees. A flagged walk leads straight to the main and oldest building, which, five times burned, has always been rebuilt upon the original stout brick walls. It is a beautiful, harmonious structure, solidly set upon the turf, overgrown with vines, through which the mellow brick shows warmly. Double storied, with a slender cupola on top, and a fine projecting WILLIAM AND MARY entrance, the lower portion magnificently arched, it has an effect of serene dignity and welcome. Within this building are the Chapel, two Literary Society halls, the treasurer's office and a dozen or more lecture rooms. It is the heart of the college. Almost as old are the two brick buildings that flank the walk just within the entrance, Brafferton Hall, where the first Indian School in the country once had its being, and the President's house. Brafferton is now a dormitory. Across the road are three other dormitories and the mess hall. Most of the students live in dormitories, though some board in town. The place is a real college. Its three hundred students know each other in- timately, and their daily life is lived together. We watched them as they drifted here and there in laughing groups. It was Saturday afternoon, and no work was to do. Girls walked with them, girls reminding you of Judge Coalter's remark, in 1791, to the effect that he " scarcely knew a place more pleasing than Williamsburg, which may justly receive the title, the land of lovely dames." The men looked unusually youthful for college men, boys hardly attained to their twenties, one would say. But a tremendous spirit of friend- liness and comradeship made itself felt. These boys were going to look back on their years at William and Mary with a home feeling that it is -HffT-4- WILLIAM AND MARY difficult to imagine associated with the great universities of our Eastern States. During the Revolution the French camped on the college campus and inadvertently burned the President's house. Louis XVI. rebuilt it out of his privy purse, donating a collection of books as further proof of his contrition and graciousness. The work was perfectly done, and the house is a charming addition to the group on the campus. An interesting detail is that the flagged walks form the letters W M. A series of contretemps prevented us from seeing President Tyler at the college or in his house. This was the more disappointing, as he had promised to show us the treasures of the library, gathered in the new building close to the Athletic Field. We stepped into the room, for most of the building consists of one large room, and glaced at some of the portraits and drawings, the old prints, and the interesting looking backs of rows of old books and manuscripts. But that is as far as we got. Several students were reading comfortably in big chairs it was the homiest looking college library either of us had ever visited. Oddly enough the space beneath the main col- lege building was used as a burial ground for several of the great men of Williamsburg. Here lie the Randolphs, Sir John and his two sons, --58-*- WILLIAM AND MARY Peyton and John, with Lord Botetourt, Bishop Madison and Chancellor Nelson. Washington was Chancellor of the college at one time. Before the main hall stands the statue of this Botetourt, the most popular of all the royal governors, show- ing a suave, agreeable man delicately clad in the height of the then fashion. It was made in 1773, and stands on a beautiful base cut with word on word of fervent praise. A fascinating, competent and delightful gentleman this Lord Botetourt, evidently. William and Mary is now a state college, and much of its energy is devoted to training men as teachers for the public and private schools of the country. So far as we could see, none of its students were in khaki. But as we passed the Gymnasium on our way to the Athletic Field, dotted over with the tents of the Marines, in regular rows stretch- ing away from the Colonel's walled tent, before which stood the Colours, we found that they were decidedly interested in military manifestations. The whole college and most of the town had gradually collected there. Baseball was in practice at a dozen different spots, the soldiers of the sea and the college lads playing together with shouts of glee and roars of laughter and excitement. Everywhere over the orderly grounds strolled the boys, looking and WILLIAM AND MARY asking questions. The tennis courts were deserted, and the many diversions of Saturday afternoon sacrificed to hobnobbing with the men from the ships. ' This is their second day here," one of the college boys told us. " To-morrow morning they go back to Yorktown. But to-night the officers are giving a dance at the Inn, and the Marine Band's going to play. It will be fine. You'll be there, of course?" JEEe smiled at us. "The diningroom at the Inn makes a fine place for dancing." The students at William and Mary find their fun, not in the way that the men at Yale or Harvard find theirs, a way usually including the spending of much money and the acquiring of a good deal of sophistication, but in the way that boys growing up in an old and small town, where the social element is strong and well founded, find theirs. The life of the college student mingles with the life of the old families of the town. He has his particular interests, of course, his debating societies and William and Mary has more than once carried away the prize for oratory from all the other colleges or universities in Virginia his Literary Societies, his college papers, his athletics. But he knows the daughters of the time-honoured houses of Williamsburg as he might the girls in his home town, he is asked to dinner or to tea, -+60-J- WILLIAM AND MARY and in the hospitable walls of the Inn he goes to many a dance, to many a party. A flavour of the older days still gives to the college a quality of intimacy and cohesion rare to-day, but desirable as rare. And now, with a rattle of drums and the clear call of the fife, the Marines were marching. And we all marched with them, or at least behind them. Down the broad street to the stretches of Court Green, where, for over a hundred years, soldiers have paraded and village sports taken place. We, the spectators, some sitting on the grass, others on the steps of the houses, or in motors or carriages, ranged round the square. The Marines deployed upon it, and prepared for dress parade. ' We are in amazing luck," exclaimed Sister. "Isn't it a stunning sight; but I do hope it is not going to rain! " Here and back again swung the martial lines, responding to the sharply enunciated orders of the officers. The band played, the band stopped. The manual of arms was gone through with snappily. Again the band blared out and again the men swung along in measured cadence. Cer- tainly it was a sight to stir the blood. And the rain did hold off till it was all over. Then there came a spattering, and we all raced for cover, we lookers on. The Inn proved a WILLIAM AND MARY convenient spot for shelter and presently the veranda was crowded with officers, college boys, pretty girls and older people. The balcony above took the overflow. Then the rain stopped. Upon which the band marched out in front to give us a concert. " It's like old days in a way," I heard a lady, white haired and gentle of voice, murmur to her companion. One of the officers stepped up on a waiting motor car when the music ceased and began to make a brief but extremely thrilling speech, urging the young men of Williamsburg to volunteer. Here, on the very ground where the Union soldiers had burned and torn down the homes and public buildings of the forefathers of those youths listening in the last flickerings of rain, we heard the appeal to fight for our common democracy, spoken in the short, swift sentences of a soldier: "We have just heard that Conscription is coming," he said. "War is already here. Many of you young men will be drafted into it many, I hope, will volunteer for it. And it looks as though you who are still too young to be drafted or to volunteer will grow up into this war and have to fight in your turn. But the harder we strike, the quicker we strike the better our chance for ending this war soon for ending war itself. -f-62-*- WILLIAM AND MARY Strike we must, against the greatest peril this country has yet had to face. War is a horrible thing. We, whose business it is, know that better than any, and perhaps hate it worse. We Americans will never be a militaristic nation. Our whole national ideal is opposed to war, to aggression, to the military ideal. But we have never hung back when the hour to fight has come, and we shall not hang back now. There is fight- ing ahead of us, suffering ahead of us, sacrifice ahead of us at the end there is triumph, peace, security for all we hold precious ahead of us. And it is you, you, the young men of America, who must help to win this peace and this security. There is no way to win it except by fighting." Sister and I sat on the balcony, looking down at the young faces turned toward the speaker. It took little imagination to conjure behind them the figures of the mighty past, when Williamsburg had blazed in the very forefront of the first great struggle for liberty; or to hear, within the words of the officer who spoke, the ringing cry of Patrick Henry, spoken but a few yards from the very spot where we were gathered: " Tarquin and Caesar had each his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third George the Third may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it!" WILLIAM AND MARY But the band struck up Dixie and the ghosts disappeared. The next moment we were being presented to most of Williamsburg as well as meeting the officers of the visiting regiment. College boys and young girls began drifting away to waiting suppers, talking of many things, doubt- less, besides the war, and the older people, after bidding us welcome with that gracious charm that is so characteristic of Virginia, and hoping to see us later at the dance, followed their sons and daughters down the broad, quiet streets and into the beautiful old houses in and out of whose doors have passed so many patriots, so many men with- out whom America would have been poor indeed. We felt that we had seen Williamsburg at a peculiarly fortunate moment of her life ; something of the stir of the older days was here again; and that evening, in the long room of the Inn, some- thing of the colour and charm and gaiety of the days of the Raleigh Tavern, when the town was a city, the capital of the colony, when the House of Burgesses was sitting and the Supreme Court in Session, when, in fact, the season was on, the theatre drawing its nightly gatherings of stately cavalier and powdered dame, and the big coaches swinging to open doors with guests for dinner and guests for the dance, something of all this was reconstructed that evening. To be sure, we danced the fox trot and the WILLIAM AND MARY one step, and the men were in evening clothes or khaki, while the Marine Band played music written later than the days of the Revolution. But what of that? When Thomas Jefferson was a law student in the town he had written home, heading his letter " Devilsburg " in a jocose spirit, and had stated that the night before he had been supremely happy, dancing with Belinda. The present-day Belindas have lost nothing of fascination. We thought we had not often seen so many pretty girls, and what a royal time they were having, splitting dances three and four times, surrounded by little courts, and managing their swains inimitably. * There isn't a doubt but that these Southern girls know how," whispered Sister, as we watched one little beauty distributing her smiles and words with an exquisite impartiality, making of her evening and of each dance a work of art. " It's a gift nature's dower." Next morning the Marines marched away, and Williamsburg fell back into her present-day state of village calm. If ever a town and a college were one, that town and that college are Williamsburg and William and Mary. From all we were told, and all we could see they are one big family. Now that the mint grows unplucked in Virginia gardens WILLIAM AND MARY there are no taverns such as those that in older days drew the college youth to roistering or taught them the delight of gambling. But William and Mary was always dignified. Her classes were and are small. Yet many great men have come from these classes. Four Presidents of the United States were students here, congressmen, senators, jurists, at least one Judge of the Supreme Court; she gave us that Clark who won the country the Northwest Territory, she gave generals both to the North and the South in the war between us. Her heritage is great, and the men who go from her to-day, to teach all over the country or to enter the various learned professions as the case may be, are full of the spirit that has made her so important a part of our history. The town where they spend four years is scarcely changed by the passing of time. During the Jamestown Exposition the citizens were considerably upset by a proposition to build a trolley up the Duke of Gloucester Street. They escaped the threatened peril, and continue to be allowed the privilege of walking and the peace of no other sounds than those of the horses going softly through the dust or mud, or the chugging of the automobiles that even Williamsburg conservatism has not kept away. They have kept the old names, and the old houses. Six miles away lies Jamestown, now no more than a lovely group of old buildings -+66-?- WILLIAM AND MARY within a charming park; twelve miles on the other side is old Yorktown, as picturesque, almost as ancient, almost as small. Williamsburg is a stronghold of the past, a sort of enchanted ground, lovely and quiet as a dream. 67 CHAPTER III Annapolis WE went to Annapolis on the electric line from Baltimore, and can recommend the trip to any one. It runs through charming country, all planted out in strawberry fields and wheat fields, in kitchen gardens, or else running wild to flourishing woods. Coming up from Richmond, we found the spring a trifle younger. Apple blossoms back on the trees, dogwood just whitening on the bough, and round the pretty houses the clear gold of forsythia. Annapolis is as clean and bright as a new whistle, in spite of its dignified age, witnessed by the innumerable stately mansions that speak a day when men built houses that matched a courtlier time and more gracious manners than we know to-day. When they built for a family, for sons to succeed them, and set their homes within gardens whose large leisure reflected their own spirit, unhurried, never idle, serene. Within its small extent Annapolis has more of these fine old homes than any other place in America. It has also been a sailor town so long it must be as spic and span as it is old and noble there is the air of a quarterdeck to Annapolis. -+68-*- ANNAPOLIS The little city is almost surrounded by water and the breath of the sea is sweet across it. Its greatest interest, next to its own existence, is the fact of the Naval Academy, of whose fine portals, with the dome of its Chapel, you con- stantly catch glimpses, now down some tree- embowered street, now across a little square, or beyond blue water and clustering fishing craft from an old wharf and the old wharves are a mighty pleasant section of a most adorable town. The centre of all is the State House, a square Colonial building with a white cupola and noble portico, that stands on a slight rise, the avenues and streets leading to it from the radius of a circle, and a flourishing little park surrounding it. Close by are the Governor's House, old churches, the court house, in fact, the whole group of public buildings, and many of the finest mansions. But truly everything is close to it, for the town is as compact as it is small ; a morning's stroll will take you all over it, from the line of the old Civil War fortifications and the site of the one-time gate to the Severn River and Annapolis Harbour, from College Creek to Spa Creek. 'We will begin with the Academy," I ex-' pounded to Sister. " because we may perhaps not be able to begin there, or even get there. The hand of the Kaiser has swung-to the gates of the Naval Academy and kept the townsfolk from ANNAPOLIS their agreeable task of overlooking parade and listening to the band at sunset. It also bars visitors from out of town. Will the publisher's letter that I proudly carry prove stronger than the German threat? We'll see." So we climbed out of the car at the very entrance to the beautiful grounds. Above the sky was a brilliant blue, with galleon clouds, snowy- white, sailing on the west wind. Beyond the bluest water flung white foam from wave to wave, and everywhere else was green, green, green. Each little new leaf looked to be swinging its hat for very joy of life . . . yo-ho, heave-ho! . . . while every grass-blade danced a tiny horn- pipe. But the Marine who stood on guard inside those gates danced nothing. His demeanour was grave, even formidable, as we approached the forbidden entrance. We produced our letter and were led to the sentry house just inside, where we handed our credentials to a second guard; and presently thereafter we were being escorted to the Superin- tendent's house. Captain Eberley is the present head of the Academy, a man of evident force and distinction, a fit inheritor of the notable line of officers who have preceded him at the post he holds. He granted our request to be allowed to see the ANNAPOLIS college without hesitation, speaking of the neces- sity of taking precautions and regretting that we could not see the Academy in its normal and more welcoming state, when there was some play mixed with the large amount of work that made the daily routine of the cadets' life. " At ordinary times it would be better to come late in the afternoon for parade and the chance it gives to see the students lined up but the social side of Annapolis isn't very much in evi- dence at present. But you can see the grounds and the buildings at least." He assigned us a Marine as guide, and off we marched to look over Uncle Sam's plant for producing sailor officers a plant said to be the finest for the purpose in the world. Since the Spanish War the country has spent some fifteen million dollars in replacing the old, unsatisfactory and inadequate buildings with which the Navy had struggled for long years by the splendid new ones that now stand in their white beauty, magnificently grouped about as fine a parade ground and park as could be wished on any college. To be sure, there has been a wail or so from the cadets in regard to the breezy open spaces of the new arrangement. Even Lovers' Lane, a broad walk curving near the bandstand, knows nothing of nooks and corners. In the annual published by the graduating class the stu- ANNAPOLIS dents give way to feelings and opinions, sometimes in prose, occasionally in verse. One inspired mid- shipman of the class of 1910 poured out his soul in several stanzas bewailing the bright changes. We memorised the last of the stanzas, and here it is: ee For in this place new "buildings stand, All stiff and new and white, With not a single quiet nook That's not out in plain sight! " The Academy is a clean swept place of noble spaces and proportions, shaded by fine trees and traversed by white paths. Every inch of it is " out in plain sight." Perhaps the ingenuity of youth discovers opportunities for flirtation, but certainly the architects and landscape artists, who laid out the new Annapolis, made no provision whatever for the romantically inclined. " Remember the magnolia shaded terraces and walled gardens of the University of Virginia, the wistaria hung porches and lilac fenced corners of Williamsburg," murmured Sister, as we walked the trim reaches of Lovers' Lane. " It's all very well to hold strictly to business, as they do here; but why the sardonic humour implied in calling this Lovers' Lane? " "Affecting a virtue if they have it not," I responded. " But, instead of pity- ANNAPOLIS ing the cadets because they seem here to be denied the sailor's immemorial right to flirt, let us look at the thorough preparation that has been made for them to work." The Superintendent's house flanks the Chapel to the right, as you stand facing it, with the Administration building to the left. These are on the town side of the reservation and opposite from them, across a broad stretch of lawn, is the Basin, where are anchored the ships used in training the cadets. Among these is the Reina Mercedes, a Spanish battleship captured in the Spanish War, and now a receiving ship. "She was sunk, but they got her up again and cleaned her out and keep her here," said our Marine. " She makes a good ship for what they want." " Maybe we'll have some German ships to range alongside of her," hazarded Sister. " Some of them submarines might come handy," agreed the Marine. But his mission was to show us the Academy, not to prophesy, and he now led us to the door of the Chapel. Or rather, before its gates, magnificent sheets of sculptured bronze that were presented by Colonel Robert M. Thompson as a memorial to the class of '68, with which he graduated. The massive beauty of these doors make a fit entrance to a church, new as it is, that has a dignity, an ANNAPOLIS up-springing grace and virile strength which make it rememberable among all the collegiate Chapels in the country. Its fine dome rises superbly from the main portion of the building, built in the form of a Greek cross whose short arms are bound together by the circular arch of the walls. This Chapel dominates the entire splendid group of grey-white buildings whose key-note is strength and simplicity, giving the final touch of inspira- tion and aspiration needed to express the spirit of the place. As we entered the Marine surrendered us to the care of a coloured gentleman who rapidly imparted a number of statistics and pointed out various memorial gifts. We heeded him little. The interior was both rich and grave, and must make a wonderful frame for the students in their dark-blue uniforms, as they sit rank by rank in a solid group in their own particular portion of the auditorium. If they are like other college boys, let us hope that the sermons are short. We wished that we might see them march in and out, and hear them sing. And then we asked if we might go to the crypt and look upon the tomb of Paul Jones. Yes, the Marine was ready for that. John Paul Jones is to America what Nelson is to the English, the consummate hero of the seas. Not only is he a hero, but the years that have ANNAPOLIS gone have not been able to dim the rich human quality of the man. His charm reaches us yet and warms our hearts to him. Now he lies, sepulchered in pomp, within a great sarcophagus of black and white porphyry, richly veined. Stands of flags decorate the cir- cular chamber, with streamers bearing the name of the Bonhomme Richard, and golden cables guard the entrance to the tomb itself. A solemn state shrouds the dust that held so much fire. A gallant and daring spirit it was, lit by the flame of genius, and all this marble and all this dim splendour of flag and column and arch are not too much to do it honour. We turned silently to leave, but were checked at the exit by the guardian of the place, who beckoned us to the register, and asked us to set down our names. We did so, and mounted the steps that led out again to the green spring. " What do you suppose," said Sister, " becomes of all the registers once they are filled with names? Who ever reads them? What are they good for? Where are they kept? " " That's like those terrible questions about what becomes of the lost pins. But it is remarkable, that passion for getting names into a book wher- ever tourists might be expected to congregate. Whose the honour, tourist or book? Shall we ask the Marine? " ANNAPOLIS But the Marine now pointed out the general plan of the buildings. We were not here to ask so much as to see and listen. His words were brief and his information clear. To the right of the Chapel group stood Ban- croft Hall, the dormitory of the students, whose magnificent faade extends for 1,208 feet. On one side it faces in upon the campus park, on the other it looks out upon Annapolis Harbour. Flanking it on either hand are the Armory and the Seamanship buildings. Beautiful pergolas join the whole together with rows of graceful columns. The stone used in all the work is not so much white as a tender grey, that harmonises admirably with the tones of the water and the brilliant verdure of the lawns and trees. Opposite Bancroft and removed by the whole sweep of the green that lies back of the Basin are the Engineering and Mathematical Depart- ments, the Steam Building, and to the right of these the Power House, standing on a small peninsula forming the northern boundary of the Basin. Besides these buildings there are the various houses for the officers and their families, Sampson Row, Upshur Row, Rodgers Row. These rows skirt the town side of the Reservation. Farther to the north, across College Creek, is the Naval Cemetery. This perfect arrangement, as well as the com- ANNAPOLIS prehensive scheme of building, is due mainly to the energy and enthusiasm of two men, Rear- Admiral Philip H. Cooper and Colonel Robert M. Thompson, the same officer who gave to the Chapel its bronze doors. They were big men, and they did a big thing, against all sorts of delay and opposition. Ernest Flagg, the New York architect, was the man chosen to consult with them and with the Board of Visitors once the necessary permissions and appropriations had been secured. This was in 1895. But before actual work commenced the Spanish War arrived to call another halt, and it was not until '98 that the corner stone was laid by Rear- Admiral F. V. McNair, who had succeeded Admiral Cooper as Superintendent of the Academy. Visitors are not allowed in the class rooms or the quarters, but may see the library and the flag room, as well as the machinery room, where innumerable models of engines old and modern are collected and are visible. The library and flag room occupy the central portion of the Engineering and Mathe- matical Building, these departments being placed in the two wings, that advance at right angles, the building making a hollow square open at one end. Over the main entrance is a balcony, and here we stood for a few moments to watch the classes march across between the point where we waited and Bancroft Hall. It was a splendid -+-T7-+- ANNAPOLIS sight. Two classes came from Bancroft toward us, while the two others marched back. They came and they went with a swing to the gay note of the bugle, the dark-blue uniforms and white caps as snappy to the eye as the alert marching step was to the ear. In tip-top athletic form, slender, straight, each boy keeping perfect align- ment, rank by rank they moved, now in the sun, now under the shading elms, a gallant thing to see. And that was our only view of the students. The library consists of a long, handsome room, beautifully fitted, and hung with portraits of distinguished officers. In serried ranks the books crowded the long shelves, all of them, it seemed to our hurried glances, devoted to technical subjects. There were plenty of magazines on the tables, however, and doubtless the lighter moods of liter- ature find room somewhere among those many volumes. We got brief time to make discoveries, however, for time was on the march, and the Marine with it. The flag room was our next goal. It has often been observed that human emotion is a strange and unaccountable thing. Most of the rules the nations have made are attempts to control and direct it, and most of our individual life is spent in doing something of the same sort. What raises one man to heaven throws ANNAPOLIS another into hell, and your heart will beat wildly enough at what leaves your neighbour cold. But go into that flag room at Annapolis, fellow American, and remain unmoved if you can. What, after all, is a flag? A piece of coloured cloth, no more? Yet, looking round that circular chamber, about whose walls, carefully sheltered behind glass and exquisitely preserved against the tearing fingers of time, hang the rich folds of the standards, each with its own story; looking up at the ceiling where are spread the captured banners of many a bitter battle, surrounding that famous flag, which, flying over Fort McHenry, inspired Francis Scott Key to the writing of the National anthem; thus looking, standing in that silent chamber, you will find your heart thumping and your breath come short. The place holds the quality of grandeur. These banners, that flew in the wild breezes above fighting men, that waved from fort and ship or fluttered in the clutch of a standard bearer at the head of his Marine regiment, hang strangely still and silent. Captured flags beside those that were brought home in triumph. Flags from all the world, and flags that tell the magnificent story of our ships wherever those ships have sailed and fought. Here hangs the flag of the Maine, found ready to hoist at the foot of its mast. Here is the flag ANNAPOLIS of Perry of the Lakes, and, stirring the heart above the rest, Lawrence's flag, that carried the immortal " Don't Give Up the Ship." And how many foreign flags! "We seem to have been fighting all the time and everywhere," Sister whispered. China, England, Tripoli, the Philippines, Korea, each hangs a tribute on these walls. Strange designs, fantastic patterns, flaming colours, each with its story. Softly we trod the magic circle of that room and left it to its solemn reveries. A place of symbols, where glory and death have met, and glory conquered. Our tour of the grounds was over, and we were back at the gate, with thanks to our competent guide, the most silent I have ever met, but by no means the least satisfactory on that score. The Naval Academy dates back to 1845, when a few old buildings on the Army Reservation at Point Severn were handed over as the nucleus of a Naval School. Up to that time the teaching of a midshipman consisted in going to sea and getting licked into shape somehow, learning to handle a ship and studying the intricacies of navigation much as Oliver Twist learned to spell window, by getting to work washing it. But when steam came in something more of prepara- tion was recognised as necessary. -+80-*- The Center of All is the State House ANNAPOLIS The inadequate and rather haphazard school turned out good officers, though no comprehen- sive plan as yet underlay its teaching or training. In the Civil War the school moved to Newport. And at last, when it returned in 1865, a man who saw its possibilities and dreamed of its future, Admiral David H. Porter, took hold and raised the standards of instruction. During his long administration the school became really great. In 1881 Captain Ramsay was made Superin- tendent, and in him again Annapolis was for- tunate. From then on her progress has been swift and steady, till now she ranks the entire world. A cadet's life is held wihin far narrower bounds than that of the average college student. Prac- tically all of a naval cadet's time is spent on the Academy grounds. But one of Annapolis' most treasured traditions is the close and friendly rela- tionship subsisting between the families of the officers and the young students under training at the post. A constant and delightful social inter- course is maintained, and the value of this on the manners and the character of the boys cannot be overestimated. A naval officer must possess con- siderable social poise to meet properly the various duties that fall upon him, both at home and in foreign countries. The ease that comes from mixing with well-bred people must be part of his ANNAPOLIS endowment. The teas, the dinners, the dances and the real friendships that enter into the life of each cadet are as useful as they are delightful in helping to develop him from the raw country boy he may have been into the trained and finished officer he is at graduation. Like West Point, Annapolis is a place for hard work, not for play. Athletics are the chief di- version at both these schools. Cadets don't trapse about town, don't own motor cars, don't turn up at recitations if they like and cut them if they prefer. They must account for every hour of their day, and their life is ruled by the strictest discipline. Yet they seem to get in a lot of fun. In addition to the rules and regulations of the place itself, they have innumerable ones of their own, especially for regulating the lower classes and seeing that they very much toe the mark. Hazing has been stopped, and these rules awake more amusement than anything else, and furnish material for all sorts of jokes between individuals in the different classes. As each class attains graduation it brings out a number of The Lucky Bag, a stout volume that is crammed full of personal and particular history. Each student's portrait with a brief and witty-as-may-be sum- mary of his character and accomplishment is in- cluded, and there are hits and allusions, scraps of verse and prose, pictures of the athletic teams, -1-82-*- ANNAPOLIS the fencers and ball players, the foot ball team, sketches of salient moments, drawings of lovely girls a whole world of undergraduate interest, frolic and achievement. The name of the annual comes from an old ship's custom. On a cruise the odds and ends left lying about deck or any- where else where they should not have been left were gathered up and stowed away in a great sack. At the end of the cruise the contents were dis- tributed by lot among the sailors; some got a good haul, some nothing worth the picking up. But the Naval Academy is by no means the whole of Annapolis. There is St. John's College, lying just across from the upper part of the reser- vation, the two being separated by King George Street. This college was founded as King William's School in 1695, the first free school in America. Its main building, McDowell Hall, was begun in 1742, and then intended for the governor's residence, but for some reason the intention remained unfulfilled. It is a fine example of Colonial architecture, and with Hum- phrey Hall, to the left as you mount the slope of the campus from College Avenue, it makes most of the college; there are four or five smaller buildings in the group, however, nobly placed on a beautifully laid out and tree-covered lawn that stretches away to the northwest as far as College ANNAPOLIS Creek. At this end there is a monument to the French soldiers and sailors who fell in the Revolu- tion, erected by the Sons of the Revolution. St. John's was the Alma Mater of Francis Scott Key, as a bronze tablet in the fa$ade of McDowell Hall relates. And there is another special possession of the college, the great Liberty Tree, standing on the campus part way up the slope. This tree is a tulip, and of enormous size. It is a forest in itself, and as we stood under it, looking up into the vast spread of branches, and listening to a world of birds singing among the innumerable leaves, it appeared rather like the tree of some ancient folk tale than an actual plant. Its age is unknown, but under its boughs a treaty between the Susquehannock Indians and the first white settlers of that locality was drawn up. Since that day it has seen countless political gatherings; here the early settlers made rendez- vous to consider plans for defence, here Wash- ington and Lafayette walked in earnest talk, and beneath it the French tents were pitched in Revolutionary days. Apparently it has always been a notable tree, older and larger than any other, in all that countryside. Annapolis is full of old and beautiful relics of past days. Fire has wrought less destruction here than in most of our Colonial cities. Only a few years younger than ivy -hung St. John's, where ANNAPOLIS for awhile we watched the collegians drilling on the campus, is the State House, that stands on the highest part of the peninsula on which Annapolis is built, within the green circle of its parked grounds. The present building was begun in 1772, and is one of the finest expressions of the architecture of its noble period. The bricks that went to its making are English, and charm- ingly patterned. The spacings of walls and windows are managed in masterly style, and though the windows are not large, the whole effect carries elegance. A pointed pediment flanked by two chimneys surmounts the second story above the pillared portico, and above all soars the dome, a curious structure in its detail but most agree- able to the eye. From the top of this dome we looked out on the whole of the little city, ringed by its blue and silver waters and dressed in the green finery of hundreds of trees. There lay the Academy, a lovely pattern; there old St. John's, close beside us the ancient church of St. Anne, and amid fair gardens the fair houses of the brave men and noble who had made the capital their home through the long history the town has known. It was in this building, in the old Senate Chamber, that Washington surrendered his com- mission as Commander in Chief, and that, a year later, the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain -J-85-*- ANNAPOLIS was signed and delivered. The room has been kept in the same condition, with the desk over which the resignation was tendered still in posi- tion. A great painting of the event is hung on the wall, and portraits of the four Signers of the Declaration of Independence who were citizens of Annapolis, Stone, Chase, Paca and Carroll of Carrollton. Close to the State House, in the same Circle, stands a simple little one-storied building of brick with a gabled entrance. This is now apparently unused, but was till lately at least the Treasury. It dates from the Seventeenth Century, and in it the House of Burgesses met in Colonial days. Walking through these streets and lingering by these old houses is very much like opening a volume of our early history and stepping into it bodily," remarked Sister, as we sauntered along the leafy ways. The very names of the streets belong to another day. King George and Prince George, Cornhill, Hanover, Calvert (family name of Lord Baltimore), Carroll. Here too is a Glou- cester Street, that used to be Duke of Gloucester, named after the same child honoured in Williams- burg, whose early death struck the joy from the heart of his father, William of Orange, and left Anne childless. And each street has its wonderful old houses, some set far back from the quiet -f-86-f- ANNAPOLIS street, some closely edging it and walling the view from the magnolia-planted garden behind. Inside, we were told, are doors and mantels carved by hand the mantelpiece of the Brice mansion had an international reputation, and the house is notable even in that town of notable homes, with its great, flat end-chimneys, its high pitched roof, the wings connected by corridors and buried in ivy. Then the Chase House, the finest specimen of its type in all America, famous for the silver mounted mahogany doors, the great double stair- case with its classic pillars and the chimney pieces carved with scenes from Shakespeare's plays. This wonderful house, whose carved breakfast room was fit for kings to eat in, is now used as an old people's home. It is pleasant to think of the old folk finishing their days in a house whose own age is like a benediction. The Peggy Stewart House, close to the Naval Academy, is the spot made notable by the fact that there Peggy watched her husband, Anthony, set fire to his brig with his own hands as a peace offering to his enraged townsfolk. For he had come to port of an October day in 1764, laden with tea and tea was not being drunk in the Colonies then. Idling along we found ourselves at the end of Main Street, where an arm of the harbour came up to a little round park in the middle of H-87-+- ANNAPOLIS which was a well curb, with the dates 1649-1708 cut into the stone. But though we asked several passersby, no one knew what they signified. Later we found that it was here that ten families of persecuted Puritans, crossing the Potomac to the Severn side, built huts, taking advantage of the Toleration Act, the glory of Maryland under Governor Stone. So part of the date was ac- counted for. It was in 1608 that that intrepid discoverer, Captain John Smith, first sailed up Chesapeake Bay perhaps we had misread the second date. Close to the park is the fish market, and if there is anything more worth seeing than a fish market, why, I remarked to Sister, bring it on. There, in shining rows and heaps lay the flashing catch of the sea. Heaped in baskets were oysters Annapolis has a big trade in oysters, packing away barrel upon barrel of the famous Chesa- peakes. Salty men hung about, wearing battered hats and blue shirts, and mumbled to each other, indifferent to the rest of the world, as is the fashion of elderly sailor- and fishing-folk. Beyond extended the wharves and docks, crowded with small boats and smacks. Dogs lay in the sun, and small brown children played about. Not far away was a place that had a sign out, Sea Food. To that spot we went in haste, and presently the oysters were proving their worth rt-88*- ANNAPOLIS to us. Oh, the poor, tasteless creatures eaten in the white glare of Broadway! The pitiful apolo- gies that lie, tame and spiritless, on beautiful china in the rich hostelries of Fifth Avenue. More terrible still, those flaccid canned abominations of the West. "Ha!" I said, as we ordered more. And " Yes," responded Sister. " I wonder if the cadets get oysters like these? " I went on, as time passed gently along. " Fit reward for all their hard work. Why couldn't we have met a cadet, and asked him questions of importance, questions that must be unanswered for all time. There must be a good deal to Annapolis besides history and training. But you have to be a resident to find it." " While at present we are more like the Walrus and the Carpenter," said Sister. " Have you had enough? " Once again we resumed our lazy tour of the town. We didn't want to miss seeing Carvel Hall, the old Paca homestead, and now a hotel. It is a five minute walk from the fish market, on Prince George Street, and as soon as we saw it we wished that we were to spend a long while in Annapolis, and that Carvel Hall were to be our headquarters. Here the mothers and sisters of graduating students come, and from it go joyous girls to the dances at the Academy. -+89-*- ANNAPOLIS William Paca was one of the governors of Mary- land as well as a Signer of the Declaration, but splendid as might have been his other attainments, he never did anything finer than the building of this house, with its two wings, its air of gracious welcome and warm dignity, a house that has an unforgettable personality aside from its sheer beauty. The very wall that guards it from the street is a work of art. Annapolis' oldest church is St. Anne, on a circle of its own west of the State Houses. It is a queer, long, low structure with a pointed spire, dull in colour but well overgrown with ivy. The present building is the third reconstruction of the original, finished in 1700, and three times damaged by fire. They tell a story in Annapolis of how the bell given by Queen Anne rang its own knell during the first fire, weirdly and un- accountably tolling its death song. This story and the Communion Set, bearing the arms of William III., and the date 1695, are the most interesting things about the old building to-day. Once a graveyard enclosed it, but the buried have been removed. St. Anne's is also noted as being the first missionary meeting place in America; the heathen to be converted being no other than the Quakers of Pennsylvania! Carrollton is now owned by the Catholics and used, we were told, as a monastery. It stands -+-90-+- ANNAPOLIS hidden by St. Mary's Catholic Church, and no nearer view than that from the bridge across the river could be had, a mere glimpse. But the river was worth looking at, and so was the outline of the town, mounting to the dome of the State House, and holding, near or far, a remarkable quality of stateliness, a something not modern at all. " And in all the little city," remarked Sister, " there is not one shabby spot, not a minute of disorder or decay. Fresh and clean it is as this shining water and sweet as the sea wind. It has all that's best in being old and nothing that is not best." You could not walk a street that did not have something worth notice on it. On our way back to Church Circle to take the car we turned into little Charles Street to look at the quaint gable-end house and printing office where Jonas Green lived and published the Maryland Gazette, founded by him in 1745, the first in the colony. And as the car was not yet due we took the few steps that separate Church from State Circle to gaze upon the old Governor's Mansion, new for Annapolis, being built in 1867, but an attractive place standing in flower-planted grounds and finely shaded, like the rest of the city. The sun was setting in purple and gold as we turned back to the car line. From the direction ANNAPOLIS of the Naval Academy came a faint echo of music, then the boom of a gun. The day was over. " We have seen the most perfect town Colonial America produced," said Sister. " And the Flag Room at the Academy," said I. CHAPTER IV Princeton You do not have to ask your way to the University. Its splendour reaches right to the railway station; in fact, before getting there we had been gazing out on Brokaw Athletic Field and beautiful faades of low, long, gracious buildings built of grey stone, the skyline broken now and again by square, battlemented towers. The very dream of a University was here before us, real and solid, concreted from men's ideals and wishes and devotion. Coming from the smaller, more ancient William and Mary, from the chaste harmony of the University of Virginia and the sharp if fine efficiency of Annapolis, Princeton spread before us with an effect of vasteness and intricacy, a great city devoted to learning, a place where youth came in thousands rather than hundreds, and to a life far more complicated than that led by the students in the two Southern seats of study, or in the Academy where every effort was pointed to a single aim. "This why, it's tremendous!" exclaimed Sister. PRINCETON Following the advice of interested friends we did not immediately enter the University grounds, but travelled down University Place to Nassau Street, and by that thoroughfare to the Fitz Randolph Gate, directly before old Nassau Hall, the original college building. For there is nothing like beginning right, even when, as at Princeton, you couldn't go wrong in your sight seeing. There is a delightful touch of sentiment in regard to this magnificent Gateway. For it was given to the University by Augustus Van Wickle, whose ancestor, Nathaniel Fitz Randolph, was the donor of the ground on which stands Nassau Hall, built in 1756. The Gate itself was put up in 1905. Its tall main towers, flanked by smaller ones, the fine wrought iron of gates and fence, the massive foundation of granite, give just the right impression of steadfastness and balance; a fit entrance to a great institution. Nassau Hall possesses above all that quality and dignity inhering to the best architecture of its period. The tall, slender cupola and belfry rise above the wide spread of the wings and the beautifully conceived central portion with a fine upspringing effect. The arch of the door and of the great window above it are excellently planned to aid in this combination of strength with uplift. The building is worthy of its historic interest. PRINCETON The grass of the Front Campus with its pattern- ing of paths, the new-leafed elms and the thick- growing ivy over the Hall added their loveliness to the picture before us. Here too the finger of war had sketched its line of colour; a group of students in khaki were marching round to the left of the building, not in formation, but evi- dently hastening to some drill. Arms over each others' shoulders, comrades chatted together, bound in the new service more closely than even by college ties. Old Princeton has always been eager in her country's cause; we saw plenty of signs that to-day no less than yesterday her sons were patriots. Nassau Hall, as we find in an old document published in 1764 by the Trustees of the college, was named in honour of King William, " that great deliverer of Britain, and assertor of Protestant liberty." Here the whole student body was housed, three in a room, and here was the library and a hall, " of genteel workman- ship, being a square of near forty feet, with a neatly finished front gallery." The architect was Robert Smith, of Philadelphia. It has had its vicissitudes. During the Revo- lution both British and Colonial armies used it as a barracks, and pretty well destroyed that genteel interior, and two fires, one in 1802 and the other in 1855, swept through it, burning the PRINCETON library and doing further damage. But the stout walls withstood both flame and army, and are now little changed from their original appearance; slight alterations in the facade, such as the removal of the two additional entrances it once possessed, and the raising of the cupola, summing up any- thing of importance in outward change. And both are improvements. To-day the old building is used for the adminis- trative offices, Faculty rooms and such business necessities. Back in 1783, from late in June to early November, as the Revolution was reaching its end, Nassau Hall was the seat of the Congress of the new Nation, and here Washington came frequently to confer on state affairs. Here too he was tendered the thanks of Congress for his great services, and here, with splendid pomp, the first Ambassador accredited to the Republic, Pieter J. Van Berckel, from Holland, was re- ceived. The room where Congress sat has now vanished into air for the main hall, in the central part of the building, is now two stories high, lending it a fine spaciousness, but cutting away the upper chamber where the august body met. We walked up into the gallery to look at some of the portraits, among them the Peale portrait of Washington, painted from life in 1784. When the canvas arrived at the college the Trustees -j-96 -f- PRINCETON hung it in the frame of " the picture of the late King of Great Britain, which was torn away by a ball from the American artillery in the battle of Princeton." Rather a neat job the ball made of it, for the frame is untouched, and fitly em- bellishes the large canvas, with Washington, looking remarkably young and plump of face, occupying the foreground and waving his sword toward the tumultuous scene of Princeton Battle, with a view of Nassau Hall in the dim distance. A wounded youth is engaging the attention of two men close behind the General but everyone is very calm and elegant about the whole affair. You might spend a week or a month, or perhaps the whole four years of the college curriculum learning the history of Nassau Hall. A faint breath of other ages hangs about the noble rooms, softly lighted by the many ivy -hung windows. At nine o'clock, from the belfry top of the old tower, curfew still chimes, unheeded but not unheard. And on the steps, flanked by the two bronze lions, when the evenings turn, the Seniors gather to sing, after the old custom, and it is on these same steps that they group themselves, in carefully unstudied attitudes, for the last class photograph packed pretty tight these days, when Princeton has grown so huge. On these steps, too, the honourary degrees to distinguished men are conferred. In the Hall itself Lafayette was -i-97-z- PRINCETON honoured with the degree of Doctor of Laws by President Witherspoon. Nassau is in truth the very heart of Princeton, the centre of the college tradition, the beloved and beautiful pile to which the memory of each graduate returns at the anni- versaries of his Commencement. " It's a great sight to see the alumni in all their crazy get-ups," said a friend who took it on himself to give us a birds-eye view of the Univer- sity. " But this year it will all be different. The men who come will wear khaki, or else make no alteration in their customary and conventional ap- pearance. So many of our men have already gone from here to war, so many belong to the battalion or the aviation corps, and so many of our alumni have also joined the colours that Princeton is more like a military college than a great lay University this year. Many of the men from the Junior Class are going too, and will probably never come back for their last year here I tell you, war hits the colleges pretty hard!" Our guide was himself in khaki, and constantly, as we wandered on along the paths and between the buildings, other soldierly figures hailed him, nodded, saluted, or simply grinned. The Orange and Black of the University had yielded to the dun hue of America's service; it seemed to us that the whole of Princeton had mobilised. "There'll be a lot of us thinking of the old PRINCETON place next September," concluded the man who was so graciously giving us his morning. The college buildings are beautifully placed upon the wide-flung grounds, so green, so exquisitely cared for, so nobly shaded by elms. Charming vistas lead the eye under arched open- ings or through great spans to further lawns, or give on a sudden wonderful glimpse of square tower or Gothic facade. Now you walk close under the windows of the dormitories, open to the spring sun and showing just a hint of the life within; now you confront a splendid flight of steps, or pause to delight in some particularly absurd gargoyle, lost in an eternally humourous abstraction from the merely human existences that eddy past it. We passed the University Offices, an old build- ing where the two famous societies, the American Whig and the Cliosophic, housed back in the first years of the nineteenth century. As everybody knows, these literary societies of Princeton, known commonly as the Halls, are almost as old as the college itself. They met in Nassau Hall before the building of this separate house in 1803, which was meant to be used for a variety of purposes besides those of the two societies. In 1838 each society built a house for itself, since pulled down to be replaced by the beautiful Ionic structures that stand in PRINCETON white and classic elegance fronting the quadrangle behind Nassau Hall, whose corner stones were laid during the 1890 Commencement, that of Clio Hall by President Patton, and that of Whig by ex-President McCosh. These societies are unique among college under- graduate activities, and they have been and still are the most important single influence brought to bear on the intellectual life of the students. They have weathered all sorts of storms, and have managed to survive the dangerous competi- tion of the Fraternities that promised at one time to become a dominant factor in Princeton's exist- ence. It was Dr. McCosh who conquered these Fraternities, the great McCosh, who was so similar to Princeton's earlier great man, Witherspoon, both in character and in the tremendous effect he had upon Princeton's growth. There are strange coincidences that the Princetonian likes to relate concerning these two Presidents of the University. They -came to rule the college just a hundred years apart, the one in 1768, the other in 1868, each working there for twenty-six years until his death, Witherspoon on November 15, 1794, and McCosh a century and a day later. But this was not all. Both were Scots from the Lowlands, both University of Edinburgh men, each a min- ister of the Church of Scotland, and important in its history. Witherspoon was more widely -+-100-*- PRINCETON interested in the affairs of the Nation he made his own, an active worker in the cause of freedom, and a member of the Continental Congress, and a Signer of the Declaration. But he had a tre- mendous influence on the University and a strong effect on the men who worked with him. His administration marked a long forward step in the curriculum, as did that of Dr. McCosh. McCosh also did a tremendous amount in im- proving the campus and adding to the college buildings. One of these Presidents carried Princeton through the Revolution, the other came soon after the end of the Civil War. Princeton suffered greatly in both wars, her sons being among the first to rush to the colours; in the Revolution the tide of battle swept over her; while the Southerners, who had numbered many among her student body, naturally deserted her after their years of bitter fighting. Witherspoon had had to rebuild an almost wrecked institution, McCosh to reconstruct one that was immensely weakened. Sister and I had been listening to much of this history as we walked across the quadrangle toward the Halls. In the centre of this Quad is the famous cannon, standing with its long muzzle buried in the ground. This is the Big Cannon, and was left behind by both American and British forces, because of a broken car- PRINCETON riage, in the historic days of 1777. During the war of 1812 it was taken to New Brunswick, but never used there, being considered unsafe. Princeton finally got it back, and in 1838 it was taken to the college grounds, and planted in its present position two years afterwards. Here the excitements of undergraduate life have their whirling centre. Here the great bonfires blaze, and here is the scene of the Freshman- Sophomore Rush, on the evening of the day when they begin their term. " It only lasts three minutes, that scramble, but it's a winner," remarked our guide. " More happens in those three minutes round that old cannon than you could tell of in three years! And I've never known a rush yet where each side doesn't claim and prove that it has won." Nothing could look more peaceful and remote from struggle than the quadrangle on a day in May, however. The men who were passing were all intent on some one or more of the thousand activities of the busy undergraduate life, that grows so intense before Commencement. We could not tell one classman from another, and certainly not one among them appeared to have so much as three minutes to spare for anything so frivolous as to get to, or to prevent some one else from getting to the old cannon. " There is another cannon between Clio and -e-102-f- PRINCETON Whig, and it's had its own Revolutionary history, and stirred up some excitement in its time," we were told. "We call it the Little Cannon. It is the one the Rutgers fellows stole one night from the corner of Nassau and Witherspoon, where it had been partly buried for years. They thought that the Princeton men had got it from them. This rescue, as they considered it, didn't occur till twenty-five years after they had missed their own brass piece, and the whole of Princeton was roaring mad when they found what had happened. A party of students went over to New Brunswick, broke into the museum and carted away some old muskets, but couldn't find the cannon. In the end, when Princeton was able to prove that the cannon had been hers ever since the Revolution, we got it back, and buried it in concrete, as you see." We did indeed. It would take a yoke of mastodons to haul the piece away now. " And what had become of the brass cannon belonging to Rutgers?" asked Sister. But there seems to be no answer to that ques- tion, at any rate in Princeton. It is difficult to get consecutive information from an undergraduate. But we managed to dig up something more regarding the particular features of the two Halls. The men who join the Halls are those who are particularly inter- PRINCETON ested in debating, in writing, in oratory, who have the forensic gifts and who want to follow the courses in public speaking that are conducted by the Department of English for Hall men, and are part of the Freshman curriculum. The old days when the whole student body was divided between the Halls, and competition ran high, are gone forever. Once the campaigning for members between the two Halls was much more important than the " bickering " among the clubs, of which more later. And before the day of the " Lit " the only literary expression open to the students was through one of these two literary societies. "But the Halls are still a tremendous factor at Princeton, and probably they always will be," said our student. ' The men recognise their value, and then certain prizes and medals are open to Hall competitors only. The Halls keep their distinction and they give a man a fine training, especially if he means to go into politics or the law. Then they are entirely democratic, and there isn't a college or a University in the country that's more democratic than Princeton. A man stands on his own merits here. He is just as likely to be on the Senior Council if he's working his way through college as if he has all the money in the world to burn, and it's the same in the clubs and the athletics. The life here tends to it, and the traditions are all for it. The men all live PRINCETON in the dormitories and eat at the clubs, that are just an outgrowth of the old commons. And there isn't any splurging here to speak of mighty few of the men own automobiles, and as there isn't any city close by, there aren't any great temptations for spending." We sauntered back across the quadrangle to- ward West College, with its bright window faces and busy store, the oldest of the dormitories, built in 1836, with Reunion beyond. Comfortable structures, each housing some eighty men. Be- tween the two a path leads to Alexander Hall, a florid looking building with a high peaked gable and sharp pointed towers and altogether too much patterning of granite and brownstone. This is where the Commencement and Class Day exercises are held, the public lectures and similar affairs. The inside is mostly given up to the auditorium, which is said to be particularly well planned. It is very splendid with mosaics and marbles. We spent little time here: its life is dormant during the usual run of college days: but we walked on toward Blair Hall, that confronted us like some picture by Maxfield Parrish, ex- tending its white splendour on toward Little and the New Gymnasium in an almost unbroken Gothic line. The white path sweeps up to the huge central tower and through the pointed arch, after flinging abroad two arms that lead to either -i-105-*- PRINCETON side, running along the two-storied wings, with their charming balconies and the smaller arches of their doors and windows. Four round corner towers buttress and climb above the mighty square of that central portion, rising solidly to twice the height of the wings. Seen beyond the fresh green boughs of young trees, the effect is mar- vellously inspiring. Through the arch, terraces and steps lead you out from the University to the station, but we were by no means ready to take that way yet. We turned to the left and passed between Blair and the distressing but very comfortable mid-Victorian aspect of Witherspoon, along by Little and the New Gym. It is difficult to give an impression of this noble group. Seen from the train it takes the eye at once, with its irregular towers and the agreeable hue of the stone from which it is built, but approached afoot amid all the green charm of the campus it is as fine an aspect as America holds. The Gym is called the best building for its purpose in the country, and the taste with which the Gymnasium and dormi- tories have been made to harmonise with and en- hance each other is excellent. " I don't wonder that Princeton men have a tremendous loyalty," I remarked. " The life here is framed with such dignity, and it is so self- contained. You don't need to go outside the PRINCETON University limits to find all you can wish for. Most colleges and universities are dependent to more or less extent on the city or the town that surrounds and holds them. The students will be scattered all over in boarding houses, or go to various favourite places for their meals. But I should think a Princeton man might easily forget there was any outside at all." " That's the way to talk," agreed our smiling guide, complacently. "And at that, I don't know but you're exactly right." There are outside dormitories, however, he explained, Upper and Lower Pyne, on Nassau Street, facing the front campus, being beyond the University enclosure. Nevertheless, they belong to the University and are built to harmonise with the Gothic quality of the newer part of Princeton, and are fascinating in aspect, with their over- hanging upper stories, and their red slate roofs, that accentuate the warm tone of the brick; their chestnut beams and cross-pieces giving them the look of houses in some quaint English town. Hill Dormitory, close to the station, is the one privately owned dwelling place, and a handsome building, Possibly there are others, though we heard of none beside. " It seems like walking through a park to wander about this series of campuses and quad- rangles," Sister remarked. " The lovely slopes -j-107-*- PRINCETON and broad reaches, the spreading trees and shrub- bery, the sense of space, and all these beautifully related but uncrowded buildings. The place itself is uncrowded too, isn't it. With so many students here it seems strange that we see only a few groups and scattered individuals where are they all? Why aren't they round, enjoying it this spring morning? " " Morning's the time we stick about inside, working. You know, work is part of the business of being here! Yes indeed. And Princeton has a mighty fine rep as a working man's home. Times past there was a lot of loafing, and a ' poler ' was in for a good deal of criticism. But it's different now. The honour system and the preceptorial method have had a lot to do with the change, I guess. I don't mean that there isn't a heap of larking, and of course we are strong for athletics, but men study here quite unashamed nowadays, and the biggest athlete may be an honour man and often is." Princeton is genuinely athletic. That is to say, practically every one of her students goes in for some form of athletics. With the Freshmen it is obligatory. They have to become swimmers, and the Department of Hygiene and Physical Educa- tion generally keeps a cautious and guiding atten- tion upon them. Then are countless ball teams and soccer teams, tennis experts, golfers, and -?- 108 -f- PRINCETON what not of active exponents of good health by way of outdoor or indoor sports and games and contests. In the afternoon we saw any number of sprinting youths about the grounds everywhere except on the front campus, which by some unwritten law, is never used for athletic purposes swatting and catching balls and variously dis- porting themselves. Golden Field with its tennis courts was crowded. But the war has had an effect on even this playing among the under- grads. The drilling takes too many of them, and then there are to be no intercollegiate games this year, with all the training they enforce. But the great swimming tank in the Gymnasium retains its popularity. We saw an unending stream pour- ing into the building, and were told " They are in for a swim." " I can't help a selfish joy that I haven't a son near college age this terrible year," whispered Sister, later on in the day, when we sat watching the drilling on Brokaw Field. " Look at that wonderful sight, all those splendid youngsters, and think that perhaps a name carved in bronze will be all that's left of many of them a few months hence. And this very minute they are drilling back there in the Stadium at the Uni- versity of Virginia, and companies are forming at William and Mary. And all our colleges are telling the same story of gallant eagerness. It's -f-109-f- PRINCETON wonderful and beautiful, but ..." she stopped, and I saw tears in her eyes. But let us get back to the walk we were taking, and which was now leading us past the pleasing severity of Edwards Hall, once known as " Polers' Paradise," another dormitory, named after Presi- dent Jonathan Edwards and built in 1880, and the Italian charms of ivy -grown Dod Hall, ten years younger, given by Mrs. David Brown in memory of her brother, Albert B. Dod, a professor of mathematics at Princeton for many years. Beyond is the Art Museum, an interesting struc- ture of handsome brick with a terra cotta frieze across the front, a copy of part of the Parthenon decoration. " It's full of jars and pots and vases and plates," said our student, somewhat apprehen- sively. "We can go in later; but I think now we'd better get through with the buildings, as lunch is coming on." We agreed with him, as we had an engagement to eat at the Princeton Inn which we by no means wanted to miss. As for the pots and dishes, it was a disrespectful manner of alluding to the world famous Trum- bull-Pyne collection of pottery and porcelain, the finest of its kind in the country, dating back to the dim ages of Egypt and reaching by many paths and expressions to the later work of all the European countries, nor overlooking the PRINCETON Orient, nor yet South America. We meant to return and enjoy it, but did not. " Which only proves once again," I admonished Sister, as we realised this later, and beyond reach, " that * Do it Now ' should be our college motto." " But if you'd seen them you'd have felt you ought to write about them, and who wants to read of china and pottery? See it, or don't see it; but never talk of it." So perhaps our loss is another's gain. Dodge and Murray and the Marquand Chapel were the next group, and the religious centre of the University. Henry G. Marquand of New York, whose grim pale face as Sargent portrays it we had so often looked upon in the Metropolitan Museum, donated the chapel, built of brownstone with a slender tower. In it are some fine windows, several designed by the late Francis Lathrop, a connection of ours by marriage. We looked on them with admiration, and an obscure feeling that they gave us at least a tiny claim on the place. There are many beautiful things on which to look in this chapel; other windows, those by La Farge being visions of rich colour, the rose windows, Louis C. Tiffany's work, and some particularly fine reliefs. Both Louis and Augustus St. Gaudens are represented, the latter with a mag- nificent bas-relief of President McCosh. We stepped out from the rich medley of -z-111-*- PRINCETON colour to the whiteness of the day with almost a shock. Across the roadway are the two halls, Dodge and Murray, in the Gothic style that Princeton has gradually made her architectural expression. They are joined by an ambulatory, and are the home of the Philadelphian Society, an undergraduate organisation for promoting the religious activities and interests of the students. It is the oldest college religious organisation in America, having been founded in 1825, child of the Nassau Bible Society. The two buildings contain rooms for the different classes and a library and reading room and auditorium. The entrance to Prospect, the President's gardens and house, is almost opposite and we looked across at their charming extent with interest. Prospect slopes upward, with fine terraces, and the house is old as houses go, dating from 1849. But where it now stands stood once the stone farmhouse of Colonel George Morgan, pioneer and explorer and Indian Agent in Revo- lutionary times. On his broad lawns the Dela- ware Indians pitched their tepees when they came to visit their friend, leaving behind them three of their young sons, in order that these might acquire the wisdom of the white men. One of them got into college, at least, but he gave it up finally and went back to his tribe. The old house PRINCETON that was used by the President before Prospect was taken over for the purpose is now the Dean's house, and an exquisite example of Colonial archi- tecture. It was built in the same year with Nassau Hall and stands near it. Here all the Presidents from Burr to McCosh lived and here three of them died. McCosh Walk, with its tree-boughs meeting far overhead in true pointed Gothic style, runs from the gate to Prospect on out to the Washington Street exit. It is the sort of walk that would have been welcomed by the Annapolis cadet who mourned the absence in the Academy of any " quiet nooks." Shadowy and not too wide, with- drawn somewhat from the more rushing and active aspects of college life, it has possibilities that are perhaps recognised. Just before you reach Washington Street you pass the Magnetic Observatory, that hasn't a nail or piece of iron in its construction. Beyond it is the attractive brick building called Seventy-Nine Hall, the gift of the class of that year. It holds to the collegiate Gothic note but strikes a new and individual colour scheme, with its rosy-hued brick and sandstone. We walked up Washington Street to the Scientific and Chemical Buildings and swung back toward the heart of Princeton, the quad- rangle, for we had not yet more than glanced PRINCETON at the University Library, which takes up the eastern side of that beautiful square. Here are again the square towers and Gothic fa9ades, the charming, whimsical carvings and the pointed arches that will always mean Princeton to an American, however English their derivation. McCosh Hall, which we spent some time study- ing later, is crowded with these fantastic bits. Here are owls in cap and gown, marvellous little policemen and college authorities fiercely strug- gling with frantic, woe-begone students. We even found a chauffeur in the attitude, if not the actuality, of dizzy speed, and a determined crea- ture pointing a relentless camera. "It must be fun to go to lectures and pre- ceptorial conferences in a place like that," Sister thought, as we sauntered along the fa9ade, hun- dreds of feet long, that is one time to enclose the whole square behind the Chapel, we were told. And the building, singularly beautiful, certainly has a chuckle to it too. The library is really two libraries, the Chan- cellor Greene and the New, the latter a Sesqui- centennial gift from Mrs. Percy Kivington Pyne. The two are connected by a passage that holds the card indices and delivery desk. The old library is now the workroom for the under- graduate body, a huge octagonal. The new and PRINCETON large building is a hollow square, splendidly equipped and furnished. When we were little children we had often delighted in the visits of Laurence Hutton to our house, and we even had indistinct recollections of having seen some of his great collection of death masks. We knew them to be here, with other collections of interest. There is a fascination about a death mask that is compelling. Here, no stiller than the model from which they were taken, were the faces of Newton, of Burns, of Robert Bruce, of our own Franklin, of Wordsworth. The mask of Dean Swift is the only one in existence, and was happily discovered by Hutton in an old London shop, among some discarded rubbish. Altogether there are over seventy of these relics. There are many more buildings that tempt you to keep on exploring, to turn down this alluring pathway, go through a vaulted archway, climb a long slope. After our young guide had to leave us we found another magnificent group up beyond Blair, with the fine Holder Tower domi- nating the solemn appeal of the dormitories, Campbell and Hamilton. Cloisters, courts where grew great trees, vaulted passages, leaded win- dow panes, and always that superb tower with its upthrusting pinnacles what a world of beauty! PRINCETON But before he left us he took us along Prospect Avenue to the Athletic Field. It is along this handsome avenue that the clubs that are so characteristic of Princeton are ranged. " They are eating clubs first and last," we were told. " There are rooms in most of them where alumni members can sleep, but the under- grads aren't allowed to put up in them. You won't see much life in any of them except at meal hours and for awhile in the evening, when maybe some one sets a phonograph going, or some of the fellows want a game of bridge or billiards. No drinks to be had in them." They are upper class clubs, and the elections are controlled by a committee of undergraduate club members and another of the Faculty. These elections take place in February from the Sopho- more class, but they can not enjoy club privileges till the following September, when they come back to the University as Juniors. There is a great deal of competition between the clubs when it comes to choosing the new members, and there have been times in the bad old days when complaints, sad or furious, were justified. But to-day the system is as fair as it is possible to make anything merely human. This is about the way things are done: On February 23 the period of bickering starts in. Then the club members do all that human -+II6+- PRINCETON eloquence may accomplish to snare the desirable Sophomore. These Sophs are chosen to be members of a " section " and any man who accepts election to a section signs a pledge that he will join that particular unit, and these acceptances are published. Each section numbers from fifteen to twenty men, but there may be many others chosen, as no limit is placed on the number of new members. A short period only is allowed for bickering, and at its close only a week is given to the elections, during which formal invitations to join the club are sent to the Sophomores in the sec- tions, and to any others the club wants. A Soph who has joined a section can decline the formal invitation, but then he is not permitted to join any other club for another year. This makes it impossible for juggling to take place. Before the bickering period it is an offense against the rules for an upperclassman to do anything that might be construed as an approach to an un- derclassman; a rule that applies to graduate members also. This system seems to be working well. " Naturally there are men who will be sore at results, and there is jealousy between the clubs to some extent, but that can't be avoided. They aren't snobbish, however. Close to half the men who are working their way through are club .H- 117 -*- PRINCETON members, and as the clubs are always on the edge of debt, there are no non-paying members. These men have to work for their club dues as well as their college expenses. The meals served are simple, and there isn't much inside luxury to be found in any of the clubs, fine buildings as some of them are." So said our guide. And the look of the charm- ing houses in their pretty grounds amply justified the adjective. They are sufficiently various in architecture, but they all have an attractive look of home. The Ivy Club is the oldest, organised as it was in 1879, and a better looking home would be hard to find anywhere. As we came back along the avenue, after an admiring glance over the immaculate greenness of the Athletic Field, with its white-tracked dia- mond, its grandstand, having a clock in the tower, the " cage " for indoor practice, the Field House, where the men dress and showers are installed, we met the club members hurrying along to luncheon. It was a jolly sight, and judging from the eager- ness and speed shown appetites are good at Princeton. " But you ought to see the Field when there's a big game on," our guide was saying. ' You saw how big it is half a dozen football or base- ball games could be going on at the same time. Well, it will be packed, and the flags, the colour, -H-118-*- PRINCETON the rushing about to get settled, the yells and cheers tell you what, it's great! " There were other college happenings that we were earnestly told shouldn't be missed, if you wanted a real idea of Princeton. The Cane Spree, for instance, held under a large yellow autumn moon on the ground between Witherspoon and Alexander; and the Senior parade on St. Patrick's Day, which is a formal notice that spring is admitted to the campus, and is a joyous demon- stration in which floats, transparencies, costumes, flights of sarcasm on college events, skits and com- ments of all sorts, not only on the undergraduate, but on the world at large, have full swing. Then there are the straining days of the mid- year exams, with midnight oil burning into the small hours, and the sudden outbreak of " Poler's recess," when, at the ringing of curfew from the belfry of Nassau Hall, windows are suddenly flung open and a mad din of toots, howls, bangs and pandemonium generally breaks forth, to last a few minutes and then cease with startling abruptness. Yes, the life of a student at Princeton is full of variety, and besides the interests here hinted at, there are scores more; clubs of all kinds for literary, musical and other pursuits, honours to be fought for, all the fun on beautiful Carnegie Lake, that used to be a dismal swamp and is now a PRINCETON bright and useful sheet of water and a delight in the landscape. At lunch we were told something of the honour system, now ruling the examinations, inspired by those in vogue in the Southern colleges, and in effect since 1893. Of the Preceptorial Method, by which a close contact is kept between the students and their instructors, the preceptors dis- cussing with the students at informal meetings the reading they are to do. These conferences between instructor and student have proved a great success, and are now an important and integral part of the Princeton system. Off toward the golf links we were shown the stately buildings of the Graduate College with the Cleveland Tower rearing its graceful height and lofty pinnacles against the sky, and we began to feel that there was no end to Princeton. " You need a month to get a mere impression of the place," Sister declared. A kindly automobile driven by an old resident whirled us about the town, if town it may be called. To be sure, it is growing fast the tre- mendous interests of the University draw more and more to its ancient ways. But it is so green and so scattered, with so many fine old places holding their spacious grounds inviolate, that there is very little town crowding. Opposite the Fitz Randolph gate the old and now much- -+-120-*- PRINCETON changed Nassau Hotel, familiarly called old Nass by the students who haunt its restaurant, takes up a large portion of the street. Nearer the centre of the town is Princeton Inn, surrounded by a pretty park. And many new buildings are pointed out with pride to the visitor. But we preferred the glimpses of the ancient houses that date back to the days when Princeton was the centre of the country's activities, at least in a political sense: the old house with its charming upper veranda where Washington had his headquarters, up on Stony Hill; the house of Thomas Clarke, where the bloodstains that drained from the dying Mercer are shown you it is your own fault if you can't make them out. In front of the house is a bronze tablet on a granite block to the General's memory. Beautiful Morven, dating back to 1701, once the headquarters of Lord Howe, and the Bar- racks, where Richard Stockton was born, of an equal age, a simple stone building of fine propor- tions and with end chimneys, and the Old Mill, whose wheels still turn to the murmuring flow of Stony Brook, close to the unusually beautiful Old Bridge, each drew from us the adjectives of praise. And of course we were whirled out to gaze over the battle field. Here it was that Washington, failing to rally the disorganised troops under Mercer, who was lying dying on PRINCETON the field, rode out in front, under the terrific fire of the enemy, and sat immovable, facing the foe. Colonel Fitzgerald, who loved him, drew his hat down, over his eyes that he might not see him die. But the appeal was sufficient, and the tide of war was changed. In this year of renewed war against tyranny it was a soul-stirring thing to sit and look over the growing fields and hear that story. We were struck by the fact that Princeton favours giving names to its estates, and that you go from Tusculum, built by President Wither- spoon in 1773, looking like some noble English country house, to Avalon, with its pillared portico, the old home of Henry Van Dyke, opposite West- land, the Cleveland house, equally handsome and delightfully " homey." Drumthwacket, standing in a grove of magnifi- cent trees, with great sweep of lawns about it and about, is perhaps the most beautiful of all these splendid places. The wide spread of its wings, the noble pillars that step so finely across the entire central portion, the unusual breadth of its steps, all mark it as one of the best expressions of the architecture of its period, 1832. Our last evening in Princeton was a moonshiny, warm and tender one, that led us out under the trees of the University grounds and round to the -M22-*- PRINCETON front campus with an almost personal force. Lights shone and twinkled on the grounds and from the many windows of the dormitories as we wandered slowly under the walls and the arches. In the quadrangle a small group was lingering near the cannon, laughing, perhaps over some remembered incident of the Rush or the last Commencement. Important, at that season, are the Cannon Exercises, ending with the dramatic smashing against its old iron of the shower of long-stemmed church warden pipes. But we went on, round the corner of Nassau. As we reached the campus a sound of young voices swelled and soared the Seniors were singing. Softly we joined the silent crowd idling in a great semicircle under the trees, some leaning against the trunks, others reclining on the grass, groups and single figures lost in the vague and shimmering shadows. Massed before the steps on long benches sat the singers, the broad bulk of the ancient building backing them, the ivy, planted by so many different classes, waving very slightly on the walls. Moonshine and shadow fell on everything like a magic veil, and the sweet odours of the spring night saturated the air. The effect was haunting and indescribable, almost unreal. The voices sounded strangely sweet and moving. Song merged into silence, and broke -+-123+- PRINCETON to song again. Occasionally, in the pauses be- tween the singing, we heard the twitter of an awakened bird in the trees about us. Too soon it ended. Singers and hearers alike drifted away, and we with them. 124 CHAPTER V Yale and New Haven WE had turned our backs on the South, and were off for New England, where colleges are thick as daisies in June. But we were bent on seeing only a few, since this pilgrimage of ours had definite limits. New Haven was our present destination. And though the trains that run to the old city are the best you can ask for, the depression of getting out at that inconceivably atrocious and ancient station is sufficient to wipe away the pleasing impression of the smooth and comfortable ap- proach. However, there are signs of a new birth, and before much longer New Haven will probably be boasting of one of the star stations on the whole line. You must begin seeing New Haven, and Yale too for that matter, in a particular manner. You simply have to start at the Green and with the row of old churches that lend it such original- ity and distinction. It was here that New Haven itself began, and as it was perhaps the only old town we have in the country that was YALE AND NEW HAVEN definitely planned from the moment of settling, it deserves a certain respect we couldn't be haphazard. It was in 1638 that a company of English Christians and they were most particular as to the Christian element, and very grim about it- walked up the slope from the sea, headed by two of their number, John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton; and stopping at the identical spot where now the exquisite proportions of Centre Church dignify the Green, they founded New Haven, under the Indian name of Quinnipiac. The fol- lowing year they built there their first house of worship. Not only was it that, but for a number of years it was practically the centre of the settlement's activities in many directions, a meeting place, court house, voting booth and what not of the useful and important. With the original group was a civil engineer, who had come along for love of a fair maiden. On him devolved the duty of planning the pro- posed town, and he laid out the Green and the streets adjacent. His conception was spacious and orderly, and it has been followed to this day. Other buildings superseded the original struc- ture, but in 1814 the present church was erected, and it combines every charm and grace of that fortunate period in American architecture, from the noble proportions of its body to the top of YALE AND NEW HAVEN its heaven-y-pointing spire. To the right of it is United, or as it was called earlier, North Church, also a beautiful building, of brick painted a Colonial yellow, with a white, blunt spire, and to the left is the Episcopal Church, of stone, over- grown with ivy. These two were also built in 1814. Standing well-spaced in a row near the centre of the Green, with fine elms about them and Temple Street running directly before them, while the broad lawns slope down in front and rise slightly behind, to the unbroken line of the Uni- versity buildings that front on the Green in Gothic splendour, the whole effect is impressive. New Haven has an opportunity for an unusual civic centre here. Many fine buildings already face the great square, the newer ones following the Greek idea. Among them are the Public Library and the Court House, built of white marble. The Taft Hotel has aped the modern sky-scraper, and though handsome in its way, it is entirely out of character with the finer portions of the square, and there are many mean and poor examples of what the lack of any coherent plan can do to spoil a noble situation. Perhaps in the future the city will exert some effort to have the buildings fronting on the Green conform to what is best there now. When it does, New Haven will possess something superb, something YALE AND NEW HAVEN worthy of the vision that must have animated her original designer. Behind Centre Church used to lie the grave- yard. Now a tablet in the rear wall relates that the body of the first Governor of the Settlement, that same Eaton who led the little company up the slope, lies nearby, and here, in a railed-in space a few feet back from the church, is buried the regicide, John Dixwell, with the old stone still marking the grave, though a new monument put there by his descendants carries carved upon it the main account of his life and death. Dixwell came to New Haven later than two other regicides, who stirred up considerable excite- ment in New Haven in 1661, playing a regular game of hide and seek, with life as the prize and death as the penalty. John Davenport, who had himself been a friend of Cromwell's, gave them faithful assistance, keeping them hidden in his house for weeks, but as the search grew more pressing a securer hiding place must be found, and so the two unfortunate gentlemen sought a rough shelter in Judge's Cave, on West Rock, which is more of a pile of stones than a true cave. Here, and in other desperate places, they spent two years, finally making good their escape to Hadley, Mass., where they are lost sight of. The name of one was Edward Whalley; New Haven has named the avenue running out toward H- 128 -*- YALE AND NEW HAVEN the Rock, and incidentally Yale Bowl, in his honour. It all makes a curious link between the city and the days of Charles II. There were many other among the old settlers and among the later citizens who were buried behind Centre Church. Beneath it the crypt contains the remains of the early Puritan families. But in 1796 the old headstones and the bones of many of those whose names stand high in New Haven's history were moved out to the Grove Street Burial Ground, which is now the oldest in the city, a place of quiet charm and green alleys, crowded with illustrious dead, among whom are Noah Webster, Theodore Winthrop, Jedediah Morse, President Dwight, of Yale, and many more of the University's presidents and distin- guished professors, with admirals, governors, generals, and folk of lesser quality. Big and busy as New Haven is, and it is all of both, it is none the less dominated by the great University with which it is identified. Yale is in the very heart of the town. And since her dormitories are by no means sufficient to house her students, many of these are scattered through certain areas, within easy reach of the college buildings, so that the undergraduate life mingles with that of the old city to a greater degree than had been the case with those colleges and uni- -J-129-*- YALE AND NEW HAVEN versities we had been visiting. Every street seems to lead to the Green on which the University turns one splendid frontage, or right into some one or other of the many groups into which the University divides. Even the water's edge holds the Yale Boathouse, and from the precipitous slopes and lofty heads of West or East Rock you get your finest outlooks on the whole extent of the University. We were to have the rare distinction of eating at Mory's, that haunt dear to generations of underclassmen; not, to be sure, in one of the general rooms on the ground floor, but upstairs, in the Governor's Room, unseen if not unseeing. Before that hour we had time on our hands that should allow an opportunity to get some idea of the various campuses and the buildings that enclosed them or fronted on them. " Let's go through that splendid arch under Phelps Tower," Sister demanded. "It is some- thing like Princeton's Tiger Gate, through Blair, except of course that it is so very different." The description seemed to me entirely logical at the time, though perhaps it may puzzle those who have never walked through either. This whole portion of Yale is Gothic, the Old Library, facing Phelps across the campus, having been pronounced the finest specimen of that type in America. In the old days Yale was -e-130-*- YALE AND NEW HAVEN strictly Colonial, built of brick with white stone window and door facings, plain but beautiful in line, as the sole survivor of that period amply witnesses. This is Connecticut Hall, and nobly it keeps its dignity and poise beside the newer buildings built on an older plan that surround it. Standing alone in one corner of the campus, partially hung with vines, the fine old structure strikes a vibrating note of peculiar charm. Once it was known as Middle, or as South Middle. At that time it made one of a long and similar row that looked down upon the Green, and which have long since vanished. It was in this building that Nathan Hale had his room, as a bronze tablet sunk into the wall testifies, while before the building stands the statue of the youthful patriot, one of the last pieces made by the late Belah Pratt, a bronze that is singularly unstudied and appealing. The building is still used as a dormitory, and here the Dean has his office. Upon this campus, besides the Library and Phelps, face the ivy-draped faades of the Art School, with Dwight and Wright Halls and Vanderbilt Hall, one of the most sumptuous of dormitory buildings. Osborn completes the stately quadrangle. Although the elm beetle has done some evil work in New Haven, and on this campus, there -i-131-e- YALE AND NEW HAVEN are many splendid trees that show little trace of his havoc. The light falls broken and soft on the lovely walls, that are so rich and yet so restrained in ornament. Although these buildings are not old, they have the temper and the tone of age, a mellow ripeness that has been greatly assisted by the mild climate of the neighbourhood, lending an English lushness to vine and green- sward, and tinting the stones to ancient hues. This is of course a very small part of the University, but here it began, and here it reaches its greatest distinction. Behind this campus, on the further side of the Library, runs High Street. Here was the Pea- body Museum, chiefly given over to natural history and specimens and collections, which is now in process of demolition and transfer to Sachem's Wood. High Street has another note of interest in the Brick Row Book and Print Shop, managed by Mr. E. Byrne Hackett according to a plan of his own that has resulted in making the place a real little club for the book- lovers among the undergraduates. No one is ever asked to buy a book in this unique estab- lishment. You may come, week after week and month after month, you may come every day of your whole college career, should you be so minded, and read to your heart's content, finger one volume after another, gaze with appreciation o *