Charles Lewis Cocke Part 4

But the old-time diversions do not pa.s.s. Those glorious romping trips up Carvin's Creek to the Falls, and the annual holiday climb to the top of Tinker in October, together with the strenuous games and sports on the campus, will continue to furnish happy memories.

The democratic spirit of the Inst.i.tution Mr. c.o.c.ke constantly cultivated, and with profound satisfaction he welcomed students from the homes of rich and poor. All entered on terms of equality in privilege and opportunity. The rich girl of common sense and industry won popularity and honor; and by the same token the poor girl gained the love of cla.s.smates and the medals of distinction. At no inst.i.tution was there more contempt for sn.o.bbery or for the spirit of favoritism. Moral and intellectual worth were the sole tests of credit and high standing.

His interest followed the students, and he smiled at the tidings of their usefulness. He counted on their private and public values in society. Some, he was fond of saying, had become the wives of ministers, of lawyers and judges, of officers of the Army and of the Navy, of political leaders and of distinguished men in all ranks and professions.

With pride, he spoke of those who were teaching in the schools and colleges, and of those who had gone into the far mission fields of the world. In his heart the grand old man felt: "They are all my daughters, and the sweetest benedictions be on every one." You will never meet the daughters of Hollins, old or young, whose faces do not light up at the mention of his name, or that of the dear place where many of life's holiest memories were stored. When old Hollins girls meet--whether as bosom cronies, after years of separation, or as strangers at some Exposition, gazing through tears at a portrait--a listener need but catch fragments of their reminiscences to know how Mr. c.o.c.ke's personality glows in the memory of his "gyrls."

"Could we ever forget how he used to read the hymns at evening wors.h.i.+p?

n.o.body else could, or can, read them as he did:

Guide me, O thou great Jehovah-- My hope is built on nothing less, Than Jesus' blood and righteousness-- In the Cross of Christ I glory, Towering o'er the wrecks of time--

This last always with an unconscious lifting of the head in his vision of the glory one day to be revealed. It meant much to look, once a day, on a colossal faith like his. Was it due to those unbroken, silent trysts with his Savior in the chapel, in the early morning?"

"Latin and mathematics were always second to the Bible with Mr. c.o.c.ke,"

testifies another. "He was certainly never afraid of the 'hard-grained muses' for us. I once heard him say, with a touch of regret, 'The next generation in our country will produce many more readers, but fewer scholars.' He revered true learning and made us revere it, however little some of us possessed it. Scholars.h.i.+p with him was no musty work, smelling of the midnight oil. He never laughed at it as odd or pedantic.

It was, in his mind, never dissociated from service; but scholars.h.i.+p was a high thing, and he flung out the work as a challenge to the best within us.

"One now laughs to recall her own mental protests, as a new girl, when Mr. c.o.c.ke would so earnestly tell her fellow-students that they would be leaders in their communities, in their states. 'How mistaken Mr. c.o.c.ke is about this,' I would say to myself. 'He doesn't know this year's girls. He is thinking about those women who shone out so brilliantly here two, four, ten, thirty years ago--those stars in the crown of Hollins. But these girls are just ordinary people. The best of them don't even know their lessons every time--not to mention the rest of us.

They could never lead communities. Great women would be necessary for that.' But those girls _have_ been real leaders, just as Mr. c.o.c.ke said.

They were nothing but girls, just like other girls, but they did, many of them, go forth to lead and to lead straight. It may be that they had from him some touch of his power; it may be that he opened their eyes to the fact that there is, after all, n.o.body else to do most of these things except just plain humanity. There really is n.o.body else, you know.

"And Mr. c.o.c.ke's dignity withal--how cheap have many other men looked to my eyes when set beside my image of him! It is like that fabled measuring rod which made inflated pride shrink to its true stature. Mr.

c.o.c.ke was the only man I ever saw who really seemed equal to wearing a high hat. I have watched the throng of the genteel coming down Broadway in their Sunday best and have thought, 'Not a man of you looks right in it--looks wholly free from affectation.' To him it was as natural as the crown of white hair beneath it.

"Imperious sometimes? Yes. I recall once, certainly. That new invention, the telephone, had been installed at Hollins. It was wonderful, enabling one to talk to the depot agent at Cloverdale, _three_ miles away. For the first few days of the new 'fixture,' Miss Matty had attended to all the preliminaries, so Mr. c.o.c.ke had not realized just what these preliminaries were, or that any were necessary. I saw him walk up to the transmitter and speak into it, without ringing the bell, asking a question of the agent. No response, of course. He spoke again.

The same dead silence. Then he right royally tapped the transmitter as with a rod of office and commanded, 'Here, _answer_ me!' Although I knew that the ringing of the bell was essential, I had the feeling that some response _must_ come when Mr. c.o.c.ke spoke like that.

"By means of credit and otherwise, he helped me and helped other girls from my section of Virginia who had less ready money than craving for an education. The work of one of these, as Foreign Missionary, has been so good and so big that I love to think that in her, Hollins may have its reward for what it did for the rest of us. But so utterly did Mr. c.o.c.ke ignore all such benefits conferred by himself that I used to think he surely must not know about these things, that they must have all been transacted in the privacy of Mr. Charley's business office. The President looked so far above any money considerations; and still he must have been a wonderful financier. Who else could have found the means of building and maintaining that great Inst.i.tution without aid of church or state or millionaire? I never know what to say when asked by school men how Hollins was financed in the old days. The means must have been brought down by prayer from Heaven somehow.

"We talk much of the prudence that keeps at a safe distance from the plague of influenza. That is right, often. But when LaGrippe came from Russia in 1889 and invaded Hollins, I saw how the suffering was, to some of the girls, far outweighed by the honor and joy of having Mr. c.o.c.ke himself make the rounds to visit them as if he cared. Cared? I have looked out into the semi-darkness of the campus and seen that stately figure, with bowed head, walking up and down beneath the window of the infirmary, where some girl lay extremely ill, moving to and fro, far into the night, in a vigil, which, let me say it with reverence, has made it easier to believe that close to all earth's pains,

"Standeth One within the shadow, Keeping watch above His own."

E. P. C.

Such was the inner life of Hollins. It was and is the loving fellows.h.i.+p and co-operative industry of a big family, consecrated to true culture, good citizens.h.i.+p and human progress. It was the life-work of the Good President, to cheer and help his girls onward to the realization of these n.o.ble ideals.

One day in May, 1901, the sad tidings of Mr. c.o.c.ke's death reached them.

Out of the mult.i.tude of letters that came to Hollins, all bearing the same message of sympathetic grief, only a few can be subjoined.

"It is sad, and almost unbearable, to think of Hollins without Mr.

c.o.c.ke. And yet, our grief at his death has, mingled with it, a spirit of thanksgiving for his life. We are so glad that we came under the influence of that life. I was so young when I first went to Hollins, and Hollins was my home for so long, that its influence, the life-example of Mr. c.o.c.ke, all, indeed, that made up the strength and beauty of those days, are woven into every fibre of my being, have become a part of my very life, so that I know I am better for having known Hollins, and Mr. c.o.c.ke."

R. B.

"For a long time I have realized that I owe more to the influence of my teachers and friends at Hollins than to all the text-books I have ever opened, and today I count it one of the greatest blessings of my life that it was in the pure, elevating atmosphere of Hollins that I grew into womanhood. To dear Mr. c.o.c.ke, the Founder, the Head, the Life of Hollins, I do now and ever shall feel the deepest grat.i.tude, and shall ever think of him with reverence, so high has always been my regard for him. Hundreds of women all over the land are sorrowing that they will see his n.o.ble face no more; for we, his old pupils, have lost a benefactor, a teacher, a friend."

M. W. C.

"Indeed, a course so n.o.bly run can be as fitly congratulated on its close--a close pertaining not merely to the finite conditions which fetter it here, but which, freeing it from these, ushers its powers, refined, magnified, glorified, into the blessed sphere of attainment awaiting those who have steadily followed the steps of the Master in ceaseless effort for the good of man. It is not the note of lamentation that accords with this grand freeing and glorious entrance of a friend of man, a soldier of the Cross, into the kingdom he has won: we rather shout our acclamations for the triumph of our friend, and drop the tear only that we are for a moment shut from the comfort of his countenance. We all, in fullest degree, offer our love and attachment, founded on unspeakable memories of early and lasting life."

B. D. F.

"I am only one of the hundreds of girls who loved Mr. c.o.c.ke dearly, and honored him beyond the power of words to express. I feel that I loved him particularly well, more than others did; but perhaps many others feel the same way. I never knew any other man whose religion showed so plainly in his daily life. It always seemed to me that he walked with G.o.d. Hollins will never be the same again to the old girls."

L. J. M.

"I feel sure that all you dear Hollins people know how fully my heart is with you at this time; but I feel that I must give some outward expression to the love and sympathy that I feel. Along with thousands of other old Hollins girls, I know what a great loss the world has sustained, and what a great and lasting grief has come to all of us who knew and loved and revered Mr. c.o.c.ke. To think of the thousands of minds and souls he has helped to strengthen and fit out for life's work! His opportunity was great, and he made the most of it,--and what higher praise can be given to any man?"

B. P. M. T.

"I have been more distressed than I can tell you to hear of dear Mr.

c.o.c.ke's increasing feebleness and dangerous illness, and I have opened each letter from Hollins with a feeling of dread, always fearing the worst. But although the sad news, now that it has come, does not find me unprepared, my grief is no less acute. I know so well what this loss means not only to the thousands of girls who, like me, loved him as a father, but to the cause of education and religion, in which he stood ever as a beacon light. My heart is very sad when I think of how much goodness and greatness and strength went out of the world when he was taken. I have not the power to express in words the grief I feel! I shall always thank G.o.d for the priceless boon of being for a time under the influence of that consecrated life, and it is my earnest prayer that I may never lose sight of that blessed example of 'pure religion and undefiled before G.o.d and the Father.'"

E. S. F.

"A friend writes me that Mr. c.o.c.ke's work is done, and that today he is laid to rest, I suppose on the beautiful hill that looks down on the field of his labors, that field that has borne such beautiful fruit. We are all distressed, as will be a great many others throughout the South who have felt the importance in life of a character like that of Mr. c.o.c.ke. If there were more men with like quality of character and mind, the world would speedily become a better place. He did what he could to better it, and there are many left to honor him who have not the strength to do likewise."

L. B. P.

"As one of the many thousands who owe to him unestimated, because inestimable, blessings, treasures of thought and influence and inspiration that time can not touch any more than it can dim his priceless memory, I sorrow today for Hollins' great 'creator, builder, guide.'"

S. B. D.

"The news of dear Mr. c.o.c.ke's death has filled me with sorrow, for I realize what an inestimable loss the church, the school, his friends, and his family have sustained. I never knew any one like him! No one ever laid down a life more filled with good works, and he has indeed earned the blessed rest which he is now enjoying."

C. M. J.

"The knowledge of such a life is invaluable. We should, we will, cherish the remembrance of it and hold this among the greatest object lessons taught us by G.o.d. The treasure of his memory would not be so priceless had his life been one smooth journey. It is the knowledge of the struggle, the knowledge that a man has fought and gloriously won in life's severest conflicts, that furnishes us the incentive, that lends us the inspiration."

A. W.

CHAPTER VII

COMMENCEMENTS AND ADDRESSES

The fine portrait of Mr. c.o.c.ke in the Hollins Library, executed by his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Lucian H. c.o.c.ke of Roanoke, was formally presented at the Golden Wedding celebration in 1890. Death claimed the brilliant artist in 1899. With keen insight she portrayed her subject at the culminating moment of the final exercises of the Inst.i.tution. The diploma in his hand is the one which he handed to his daughter, Miss Matty L. c.o.c.ke, on the day of her graduation. The artist wanted a real diploma, and by felicitous chance, this was the one supplied. At the time, the owner little dreamed of being her father's successor as President of Hollins Inst.i.tute.

As now, so during the lifetime of Mr. c.o.c.ke, Maytime at Hollins stirred a flutter of excitement in the student's mind. The session's close was drawing near, with its terrors of examinations; its flourish of music, oratory and white dresses; its orderly pomp and splendor. The season brought a new flush of animation and gaiety. There were happy greetings of fathers and mothers. The old girls came, eager for the raptures of re-union. The bright stars shone on dear old Hollins; the blue mountains stood guard round their jewel; and the sky dropped down benediction.

Nature and the human heart held high festival on Commencement Day.

Services began with an interesting dramatic presentation, and the Reception to the Senior Cla.s.s. The Sunday services were conducted by invited ministers. In the days following, came the jollities of Cla.s.s Day, the joint celebration of the Societies, the Musical Concert, and lastly, the annual address by the President, with the conferring of Diplomas. Of course the programs of the earlier years were not so elaborate as the one just indicated, but the exercises were as vitally interesting and popular. On these occasions many distinguished men delivered strong and eloquent addresses. Woe to the man who ventured to stand before a Hollins audience without honest preparation. Declamatory rhetoric never deceived this group of intellectually alert students. Mr.

c.o.c.ke drew his ministers for Commencement from the various Protestant denominations, as the students came from all these bodies. Sectarian narrowness never guided his choice, and that spirit never thrived in his school. Christian truth and character were to him the eternal verities, and among all communions he made devoted friends. One of his preachers disappointed him cruelly. That good man made a calamitous mistake. He had fancied that he was to appear before a mountain school, and that almost any sort of a sermon would answer. Lazy unpreparedness meets retribution. Arriving at Hollins, his disillusion was instantaneous, and all that Sat.u.r.day night he tossed in mental misery. The next morning he appeared in the pulpit with an irrelevant theme, and a profitless sermon. College girls are never profoundly impressed by unctuous plat.i.tudes, or by theological combat.