Page learned the elementary branches, though his mother herself taught
him to read and write. The boy showed such aptitude in his studies that
his mother began to hope, though in no aggressive fashion, that he might
some day become a Methodist clergyman; she had given him his middle
name, "Hines," in honour of her favourite preacher--a kinsman. At the
age of twelve Page was transferred to the Bingham School, then located
at Mcbane. This was the Eton of North Carolina, from both a social and
an educational standpoint. It was a military school; the boys all
dressed in gray uniforms built on the plan of the Confederate army; the
hero constantly paraded before their imaginations was Robert E. Lee;
discipline was rigidly military; more important, a high standard of
honour was insisted upon. There was one thing a boy could not do at
Bingham and remain in the school; that was to cheat in class-rooms or at
examinations. For this offence no second chance was given. "I cannot
argue the subject," Page quotes Colonel Bingham saying to the distracted
parent whose son had been dismissed on this charge, and who was begging
for his reinstatement. "In fact, I have no power to reinstate your boy.
I could not keep the honour of the school--I could not even keep the
boys, if he were to return. They would appeal to their parents and most
of them would be called home. They are the flower of the South, Sir!"
And the social standards that controlled the thinking of the South for
so many years after the war were strongly entrenched. "The son of a
Confederate general," Page writes, "if he were at all a decent fellow,
had, of course, a higher social rank at the Bingham School than the son
of a colonel. There was some difficulty in deciding the exact rank of a
judge or a governor, as a father; but the son of a preacher had a fair
chance of a good social rating, especially of an Episcopalian clergyman.
A Presbyterian preacher came next in rank. I at first was at a social
disadvantage. My father had been a Methodist--that was bad enough; but
he had had no military title at all. If it had become known among the