This distinguished scholar--a fine figure with an imperial beard that
suggested the Confederate officer--used to have Page to tea at least
twice a week and at these meetings the young man was first introduced in
an understanding way to Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and
the other writers who became the literary passions of his maturer life.
And Price did even more for Page; he passed him on to another place and
to another teacher who extended his horizon. Up to the autumn of 1876
Page had never gone farther North than Ashland; he was still a Southern
boy, speaking with the Southern drawl, living exclusively the thoughts
and even the prejudices of the South. His family's broad-minded attitude
had prevented him from acquiring a too restricted view of certain
problems that were then vexing both sections of the country; however,
his outlook was still a limited one, as his youthful correspondence
shows. But in October of the centennial year a great prospect opened
before him.


III

Two or three years previously an eccentric merchant named Johns Hopkins
had died, leaving the larger part of his fortune to found a college or
university in Baltimore. Johns Hopkins was not an educated man himself
and his conception of a new college did not extend beyond creating
something in the nature of a Yale or Harvard in Maryland. By a lucky
chance, however, a Yale graduate who was then the President of the
University of California, Daniel Coit Gilman, was invited to come to
Baltimore and discuss with the trustees his availability for the
headship of the new institution. Dr. Gilman promptly informed his
prospective employers that he would have no interest in associating
himself with a new American college built upon the lines of those which