The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-12-10
THE POTEATS KNOW THEIR
DEBT TO THEIR MOTHER.

Every public occasion built about a
man holds within itself in addition to
the significance of the worth of the
| central figure or the work which he
has done some private and personal
current of emotion. Radiating from
the sparkling surface of the evident
meaning of the day, there shine here
and there within an audience lights
which, inextricably mixed with the
proceedings, yet spring from things
which go back into unknown and I'M
considered days Watch the faces of
an audience and you will catch the
CLEAN in some eye, you will see the
CULVER of some hand in which is pho
tographed a feeling that holds itself
in a certain sense unworthy and
which is yet elate in the privacy of
its enjoyment. The glory of love,
reflected and revealed in a public
character, is a thing which redeems
and irradiates. 1t is a homely token,
a hope springing through the years
to meet it's realization and weeping in
it's ecstasy. So does the happiest in
cident of a vivid success become the
most pathetic. And so does the see
ing eye convey to the heart from the
glamour of the inseparable pomp of
ceremony the human touch which
counts the parsonage the man and
precipitates pre-eminence into basic
oil IF -, 81; -
devotion of simple hearts.
Possibly the pathos is created on
the general character of the hope and
the rarity of its fulfilment. When
the two things fall together the
triumph of the joy is too poignant to
exist without the tear.
In all the hundreds of people who
saw DR.. w. L. Poteat indicted into
the presidency of Wake Forest Col
lege, there was one who had the high
and radiant privilege of bending her
head in the unutterable thanksgiving
of a completed task. Mrs. Poteat. the
aged mother of the new president,
sat under the spell of two of her sons.
both presidents of colleges of her
faith. The one, a minister. invoked
the blessing of God upon the other.
who was taking up a high work full
of honor. The two were the central
figures. The mother, the modest. quiet.
joy-filled mother. sat and listened.
Here was her work, there her sons!
These people about who applauded,
who spoke i'm congratulatory phrase
what did they know? How the mem
cries must have crowded back upon
her. this responsible person in a great
gathering! What was she thinking who
sat there watching her sons who had
striven even beyond a mothers ex-
pectation; she who knew them to the
slightest gesture. to the wrinkle of
the brow or the twitch of lip? Hers
was a noble seclusion, quiet in her
CHAIR amid the applause. listening to
the men who, speaking in eufogy, knew
nothing about it at ALI
But the sons remembered and they
spoke in words which must have
thrilled that patient heart. widowed
yet triumphant in the nrblic recogni-
ton of what she had carried a secret
in her breast for all the years. The
two Poteats knew their debt. The pres
ident of the Furman University and
the president of Wake Forest! In the
moment of their triumph they had be-
fore their eyes the picture of which
men dream when they are boys. the
sorrow which comes with increase of
power that. where they grew strong,
others grew weak with age. Yet she
saw and, laying their tribute at her
feet. the Poteat brothers knew that
she understood and that she was glad,
A thing that few saw: this mother
and her boys! And yet the triumph
of the OCCASION, the continuing wonder
of humanity, the spur to victory and
the balm to defeat, all there in the
person of an aged lady we'll pleased
and smiling through her tears. Swal-
lowed as she was in the audience. Mrs.
Poteat was the center of the Inaugural
ton to those who, passing the imma-
terial, knew where to look for the
deeper causes of the day.