that the recipient is either a humbug or a bootlicker. Page had
therefore attempted to keep his reputation unsullied by aiming at a low
academic record! The report on that three months' work, which still
survives, discloses that Page's conspiracy against himself did not
succeed, for his marks are all high. "Be sure to send him back" is the
annotation on this document, indicating that Page had made a better
impression on Trinity than Trinity had made on Page.

But the rebellious young man did not return. After Christmas, 1872, his
schoolboy letters reveal him at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va.
Here again the atmosphere is Methodistical, but of a somewhat more
genial type. "It was at Ashland that I first began to unfold," said Page
afterward. "Dear old Ashland!" Dr. Duncan, the President, was a
clergyman whose pulpit oratory is still a tradition in the South, but,
in addition to his religious exaltation, he was an exceedingly lovable,
companionable, and stimulating human being. Certainly there was no lack
of the religious impulse. "We have a preacher president," Page writes
his mother, "a preacher secretary, a preacher chaplain, and a dozen
preacher students and three or more preachers are living here and
twenty-five or thirty yet-to-be preachers in college!" In this latter
class Page evidently places himself; at least he gravely writes his
mother--he was now eighteen--that he had definitely made up his mind to
enter the Methodist ministry. He had a close friend--Wilbur Fisk
Tillett--who cherished similar ambitions, and Page one day surprised
Tillett by suggesting that, at the approaching Methodist Conference,
they apply for licensing as "local preachers" for the next summer. His
friend dissuaded him, however, and henceforth Page concentrated on more
worldly studies. In many ways he was the life of the undergraduate body.
His desire for an immediate theological campaign was merely that passion
for doing things and for self-expression which were always conspicuous