[Illustration:  Allison Francis Page (1824-1899), father of Walter H. Page]

[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.  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.