[Illustration: Catherine Raboteau Page (1831-1897), mother of Walter H.
Page]

But Randolph-Macon did one great thing for Page. Like many small
struggling Southern, colleges it managed to assemble several instructors
of real mental distinction. And at the time of Page's undergraduate life
it possessed at least one great teacher. This was Thomas R. Price,
afterward Professor of Greek at the University of Virginia and Professor
of English at Columbia University in New York. Professor Price took one
forward step that has given him a permanent fame in the history of
Southern education. He found that the greatest stumbling block to
teaching Greek was not the conditional mood, but the fact that his
hopeful charges were not sufficiently familiar with their mother tongue.
The prayer that was always on Price's lips, and the one with which he
made his boys most familiar, was that of a wise old Greek: "O Great
Apollo, send down the reviving rain upon our fields; preserve our
flocks; ward off our enemies; and--build up our speech!" "It is
irrational," he said, "absurd, almost criminal, to expect a young man,
whose knowledge of English words and construction is scant and inexact,
to put into English a difficult thought of Plato or an involved period
of Cicero." Above all, it will be observed, Price's intellectual
enthusiasm was the ancient tongue. A present-day argument for learning
Greek and Latin is that thereby we improve our English; but Thomas H.
Price advocated the teaching of English so that we might better
understand the dead languages. To-day every great American educational
institution has vast resources for teaching English literature; even in
1876, most American universities had their professors of English; but
Price insisted on placing English on exactly the same footing as Greek
and Latin. He himself became head of the new English school at
Randolph-Macon; and Page himself at once became the favourite pupil.