There were but four graduates in that far-off little country college with the hyphenated name and the honored history. It may be that their grandchildren will read the roll here: Robert Campbell Anderson, Thomas Brown Venable, Paul Carrington, and Mr. Rice, whose initials I think were “T. C.” There were, I reiterate, but four graduates, but they took three honors. Robert Anderson was valedictorian; Mr. Rice of the uncertain initials had the philosophical oration; Tom Brown Venable had the Latin salutatory; and Paul Carrington, the one honorless man, made the most brilliant speech of them all. It was a way he had. The madcap of the college—who just “got through,” as it were, by the skin of his teeth, by cramming night and day for two months to make up for an indefinite series of wretched recitations and numberless escapades out of class—he easily eclipsed his mates on that day of days. The boys used to say that he was “Saul,” until he got up to declaim, or make an original address. Then he was “Paul.” He was Pauline, _par éminence_, to-day. I could recite verbatim his lament over Byron’s wasted powers, and I see, as if it were but yesterday that it thrilled me, the pose and passion of the outburst, arms tossed to heaven in the declamation: “O! had his harp been tuned to Zion’s songs!” Music was “rendered” by an admirably trained choir. The hour of the brass-band had not come yet to Hampden-Sidney. And the choir rendered sacred music—such grand old anthems as, “Awake! awake! put on thy strength, O Zion! Put on thy beautiful garments”; and, “How beautiful upon the mountains Are the feet of him that publisheth salvation; That saith unto Zion, ‘Thy God reigneth!’” Doctor Maxwell was the president then, and was portentous in my eyes in his don’s gown. Dear old Hampden-Sidney! she has arisen, renewed in youth and vigor, from the cinders of semi-desolation, has cast aside the sackcloth and ashes of her grass-widowhood, and stepped into the ranks of modern progress. I like best to recall her when she maintained the prestige of her traditional honors and refused to accept decadence as a fixed fact. XI BACK IN POWHATAN—OLD VIRGINIA HOUSEWIFERY—A SINGING-CLASS IN THE FORTIES—THE SIMPLE LIFE? MY father’s “ways” were so well known by his neighbors it was taken for granted that the education of his daughters would not be conducted along conventional lines after we returned home. Mr. Howison had completed his theological course in the seminary, and there were other plans on foot, known as yet to my parents alone, which made the engagement of another tutor inexpedient.