One feature of scholarship that was peculiar to the Old South was the general and thorough devotion to, and mastery of, the classics. I doubt if ever the youth of any country were so well grounded in the literature of Greek and Latin poet and historian, or caught so fully and finely the beauty of the old philosophies and mythologies. It was not an uncommon feat for a boy of fourteen, upon entrance as a freshman to a college of the old order, to read Virgil and Horace _ore rotundo_, with a grace and finish that would do credit to a post-bellum alumnus. Latin, Greek, and the higher mathematics, with a modicum of the physical sciences, constituted the favored curriculum of the old-time academy and college. How much some of us owe to that ancient academy and that small college can never be rightly estimated. The standard of study was severe and thorough. The discipline was often rigorous and exacting. What, for instance, would our latter-day college boys think of a rule compelling their attendance, if within a mile of the chapel, upon sunrise prayer the year round? Or how would a shudder run through their ranks if I paused to tell them of how in our old Academy two score of us classical students, ranging in age from fifteen to thirty years, having been discovered demolishing the business signs of town merchants in an effort to fulfill the Scriptures which declared that they should seek a sign and none should be given unto them, were soundly thrashed with exceeding roughness and dispatch by the man who for many years has held the superintendency of public schools in the foremost city of the South! Alas for the disappearance of those good old days and customs, of which the survivors have feeling and pathetic remembrance! For one, I am glad that free public education has come to the children, white and black, of the New South. Whether the hopes of the statesman and philanthropist shall be realized or not, I am also glad of the millions of money the New South has expended in the past generation upon the education of the masses. But the day of the ancient academy and college, as source and inspiration of an incomparable culture, will never be surpassed by latter-day educational systems, however widely extended and beneficent these may be. There was something intensely stimulating in the spirit and method of the old classical school; a sharp yet generous competition and rivalry of scholarship; a thoroughness that reached the foundation of every subject traversed; and above and through it all there was the sure development of a sense of honor and a pride of scholarship that lifted even the dull student into an ambition to succeed. Mixed with all was the example and influence of high-bred Christian gentlemen as professors and teachers, whose lives reenforced their teachings and molded us into the image of the gentleman of the Old South. The utilitarian in education was not yet in evidence. The bread-and-butter argument was reserved to a later generation.