The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1904-08-25
"A Place Which, Mellow
ing With Age, Progresses
EARNEST LAW CLASS
Fifty Young Men LabOring Unremit-
tingIy Through the DOg-Days.
A Large Class to Go Before Su-
preme Court. How the Uni
versity Road Runs from
a Spot to a Place.
BY II. Il. GRAY.

Chapel Hill, N. c.. Aug. 24-This is
place that is set apart from the
world. Under the green canopies OF
its leaves, haste were q sin; in the
silences of its words, near the peace
ful gurgle of its unassuming and sur
prising streams there is room for
nothing of discomfort save the out
reach of the heart for beauty and for
truth; in the gorgeous evening spec
tacles of its hilltopS the broad sweep
of the eye takes rest for the move
ment in the soul and today and yes
terday and tomorrow, with all thelr
petty cares and forebodings are lost in
the swelling sense of life and being
that some how seems most acutely
forced inward when nature presses
home most powerfully the sense of her
own largeness and the individual in
consequence.
Notwithstanding it is only twenty
eight miles as the crow flies from
Raleigh, despite the fact that we can
see plainly from a dozen hills the
spiers and the factory smoke of hust-
ling concrete, matter of fact Dur
ham town, Chapel Hill includes within
itself it's own World-its own distinc-
ton people, it's own look of the COM
mon things like grass and trees and
rocks it's own thoughts, its own
philosophy, its own dreams.
Y
i'm the legs-and then only when 1t is
more graceful to daZe. Under its pc
culiar spell, the brain of the youth
of the State has fourished for over
century into that of vigorous man
hood 1t has found out by the hum
dreds it's statesmen, it's solcters, its
keen-nosed men of affairs. But one
and all, the eminent, the ..........,
the boy who before the war came with
II, nf slaves
and the fine young animal in the
rough who of later days has frequently
followed the spark within his soul on
weary footsteps from mountain
home, she has sent them out with the
stamp of her uniqueness upon them.
And returning half-afraii with their
cherished dreams, they find them still
intact 1t is that which makes the
wonder of the place.
Probe the sentimental ambition
which each man carries somewhere in
his heart full knowledge that the
practicability of his surroundings will
never permit its achievement and you
will find that in nine cases out OF ten
it has to do with a Home at Place.
Let the man have been tarred with
the University stick and he will tell
YOU along with his after-dinner cigar
that he has a notion of some day
building a house at Chapel Hill-and
there remaining to the end of the
chapter in the one place where he be-
lieves he can obtain a large and per-
feet peace These men cling to the
town and it's surroundings with
memory that is both tenacious and
jealous of details.
A friend was disceiting to one C
these-a graduate before the war--the
site Of the present Alumni Building
Suddenly the old graduates eyes
flashed fire:
what" he exclaimed "You don't
| tell me they've cut down the old coli
| lege linden! I'd rather they'd have
gone without that building forever
! than that they should have touched
! that tree!''
| And so it goes. Living in the hearts
of its scattered children. each tree
and shrub and rose bush, almost each
stone of its surid ranks of rough bullt
walls, bears it's own faint story; and II
is the indefinable suggestion that
seems in time to float out from the
inanimate things that have brushed
on hum and hopes that strongly
strikes the newcomer at the moment
that he places foot upon the campus
and brings to the returned tingling
of the blood and half-forgotten smell
of the air that at once exhilirates ana
racall to half-sad dreams OF bye