tary and now President of the Board, a close
personal intimacy grew up. Dr. Buttrick moved to Teaneck Road,
Englewood, where Page had his home, and many a long evening did the two
men spend together, many a long walk did they take in the surrounding
country, always discussing education, especially Southern education. A
letter to the present writer from Dr. Abraham Flexner, the present
Secretary of the Board, perhaps sums up the matter. "Page was one of the
real educational statesmen of this country," says Dr. Flexner, "probably
the greatest that we have had since the Civil War."

And this Rockefeller support came at a time when that movement known as
the "educational awakening" had started in the South. In 1900 North
Carolina elected its greatest governor since the Civil War--Charles B.
Aycock. A much repeated anecdote attributes Lincoln's detestation of
slavery to a slave auction that he witnessed as a small boy; Aycock's
first zeal as an educational reformer had an origin that was even more
pathetic, for he always carried in his mind his recollection of his own
mother signing an important legal document with a cross. As a young man
fresh from the university Aycock also came under the influence of Page.
An old letter, preserved among Page's papers, dated February 26, 1886,
discloses that he was a sympathizing reader of the "mummy" controversy;
when the brickbats began flying in Page's direction Aycock wrote,
telling Page that "fully three fourths of the people are with you and
wish you Godspeed in your effort to awaken better work, greater
activity, and freer opinion in the state." And now under Aycock's
governorship North Carolina began to tackle the educational problem with
a purpose. School houses started up all over the state at the rate of
one a day--many of them beautiful, commodious, modern structures, in
every way the equals of any in the North or West; high schools, normal
schools, trade schools made their appearance wherever the need was
greatest; and in other parts of the South the response was similarly
energetic. The reform is not yet complete, but the description that Page
gave of Southern education in 1897, accurate in all its details as it
was then, has now become ancient history.

IV

And in occupations of this kind Page passed his years of maturity. His
was not a spectacular life; his family for the most part still remained
his most immediate interest; the daily round of an editor has its
imagina