same cause and to exempt officers and students
of the institution from military service. Still later, intent upon this
great work, they had induced Virginia to take from her own beloved
William and Mary one-sixth of all surveyors' fees in the district and
contribute them. The early Kentuckians, for their part, planned and
sold out a lottery--to help along the incorruptible work. For such an
institution Washington and Adams and Aaron Burr and Thomas Marshall and
many another opened their purses. For it thousands and thousands of
dollars were raised among friends scattered throughout the Atlantic
states, these responding to a petition addressed to all religious
sects, to all political parties. A library and philosophical apparatus
were wagoned over the Alleghanies. A committee was sent to England to
choose further equipments. When Kentucky came to have a legislature of
its own, it decreed that each of the counties in the state should
receive six thousand acres of land wherewith to start a seminary; and
that all these county seminaries were to train students for this
long-dreamed-of central institution. That they might not be sent
away--to the North or to Europe. When, at the end of the Civil War, a
fresh attempt (and the last) was made to found in reality and in
perpetuity a home institution to be as good as the best in the
republic, the people rallied as though they had never known defeat. The
idea resounded like a great trumpet throughout the land. Individual,
legislative, congressional aid--all were poured out lavishly for that
one devoted cause.
Sad chapter in the history of the Kentuckians! Perhaps the saddest
among the many sad ones.
For such an institution must in time have taught what all its
court-houses and all its pulpits--laws human and divine--have not been
able to teach: it must have taught the noble commonwealth to cease
murdering. Standing there in the heart of the people's land, it must
have grown to stand in the heart of their affections: and so standing,
to stand for peace. For true learning always stands for peace. Letters
always stand for peace. And it is the scholar of the world who has ever
come into it as Christ came: to teach that human life is worth saving
and must be saved.
VII
The storm approaching David was vaster and came faster.
Several days had passed since his anxious and abruptly terminated
interview with his pastor. During the interval he had addressed no
further inq
|