THE PRESIDENT AND HIS GIRLS
A careful examination of the catalogues and school registers of the
early years leads us to believe that by June, 1896, when Mr. Cocke
delivered his semi-centennial address, he had seen under training at
Hollins not fewer than 5,000 young women. To the privileges of the
school he had welcomed the children and grandchildren of his first
pupils. As terms of study closed, what did this host of girls think of
the Head of the Institution? Today in thousands of homes throughout the
nation, the name of Hollins unseals, as by magic, a well-spring of
precious and tender reminiscence. With unanimous devotion, the girls who
knew him, honored and loved the name of Charles L. Cocke. Hardly did
Tinker and Dead Man Mountain loom so large to them as the form of the
venerable man. They honored him because he was strict and absolutely
just; because he held high standards of school decorum and culture, and
insisted on hard work. He was too honorable to take the daughters of
patrons, and allow waste of time and opportunity. His stringent demands
may sometimes have caused irritation, but the good sense of the student
was certain to react to grateful recognition of his wisdom. The after
years never fail to evoke loving acknowledgment in the heart of a girl
whose teacher requires her to make good in her studies. The Hollins
girls loved Mr. Cocke because he was uniformly considerate and kind. The
fatherly interest in his heart, not one was allowed to doubt. Daily he
met them at the evening worship. Often has the visiting "old girl"
spoken of those unforgotten prayers. He welcomed them in his office,
listened to their requests, responding with sound advice and
encouragement. Arbitrariness and severity were foreign to his nature,
but all knew that the standards of conduct and study must be maintained.
How proud he was of the distinctions won by his girls! In the early
eighties five of them, in the English literature classes, took the
Shakespeare prize offered in London.
[Illustration: "GOOD MORNING, 'GYRLS'"]
The class room work was ever the major interest, but beyond this was a
large range of activity and diversion. In 1855 the Euzelian (Love of
Wisdom) Society was organized for debate, recitations and essays.
Increasing numbers in 1874 required the formation of the Euepian (Pure
Diction) Society. Still memorable are those exciting joint debates,
held occasionally by the Societies, along the years. In these latter
days, they have given place to other disciplines more in harmony with
the practical spirit of the age. Class organizations, Sororities, Clubs,
Student Government, the College "Spinster" and Magazine, monopolize the
spare hours. The Young Women's Christian Association maintains its
prominence and usefulness.
But the old-time diversions do not pass. Those glorious romping trips up
Carvin's Creek to the Falls, and the annual holiday climb to the top of
Tinker in October, together with the strenuous games and sports on the
campus, will continue to furnish happy memories.
The democratic spirit of the Institution Mr. Cocke constantly
cultivated, and with profound satisfaction he welcomed students from the
homes of rich and poor. All entered on terms of equality in privilege
and opportunity. The rich girl of common sense and industry won
popularity and honor; and by the same token the poor girl gained the
love of classmates and the medals of distinction. At no institution was
there more contempt for snobbery or for the spirit of favoritism. Moral
and intellectual worth were the sole tests of credit and high standing.
His interest followed the students, and he smiled at the tidings of
their usefulness. He counted on their private and public values in
society. Some, he was fond of saying, had become the wives of ministers,
of lawyers and judges, of officers of the Army and of the Navy, of
political leaders and of distinguished men in all ranks and professions.
With pride, he spoke of those who were teaching in the schools and
colleges, and of those who had gone into the far mission fields of the
world. In his heart the grand old man felt: "They are all my daughters,
and the sweetest benedictions be on every one." You will never meet the
daughters of Hollins, old or young, whose faces do not light up at the
mention of his name, or that of the dear place where many of life's
holiest memories were stored. When old Hollins girls meet--whether as
bosom cronies, after years of separation, or as strangers at some
Exposition, gazing through tears at a portrait--a listener need but
catch fragments of their reminiscences to know how Mr. Cocke's
personality glows in the memory of his "gyrls."
"Could we ever forget how he used to read the hymns at evening worship?
Nobody else could, or can, read them as he did:
Guide me, O thou great Jehovah--
My hope is built on nothing less,
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness--
In the Cross of Christ I glory,
Towering o'er the wrecks of time--
This last always with an unconscious lifting of the head in his vision
of the glory one day to be revealed. It meant much to look, once a day,
on a colossal faith like his. Was it due to those unbroken, silent
trysts with his Savior in the chapel, in the early morning?"
"Latin and mathematics were always second to the Bible with Mr. Cocke,"
testifies another. "He was certainly never afraid of the 'hard-grained
muses' for us. I once heard him say, with a touch of regret, 'The next
generation in our country will produce many more readers, but fewer
scholars.' He revered true learning and made us revere it, however
little some of us possessed it. Scholarship with him was no musty work,
smelling of the midnight oil. He never laughed at it as odd or pedantic.
It was, in his mind, never dissociated from service; but scholarship was
a high thing, and he flung out the work as a challenge to the best
within us.
"One now laughs to recall her own mental protests, as a new girl, when
Mr. Cocke would so earnestly tell her fellow-students that they would be
leaders in their communities, in their states. 'How mistaken Mr. Cocke
is about this,' I would say to myself. 'He doesn't know this year's
girls. He is thinking about those women who shone out so brilliantly
here two, four, ten, thirty years ago--those stars in the crown of
Hollins. But these girls are just ordinary people. The best of them
don't even know their lessons every time--not to mention the rest of us.
They could never lead communities. Great women would be necessary for
that.' But those girls _have_ been real leaders, just as Mr. Cocke said.
They were nothing but girls, just like other girls, but they did, many
of them, go forth to lead and to lead straight. It may be that they had
from him some touch of his power; it may be that he opened their eyes to
the fact that there is, after all, nobody else to do most of these
things except just plain humanity. There really is nobody else, you
know.
"And Mr. Cocke's dignity withal--how cheap have many other men looked to
my eyes when set beside my image of him! It is like that fabled
measuring rod which made inflated pride shrink to its true stature. Mr.
Cocke was the only man I ever saw who really seemed equal to wearing a
high hat. I have watched the throng of the genteel coming down Broadway
in their Sunday best and have thought, 'Not a man of you looks right in
it--looks wholly free from affectation.' To him it was as natural as the
crown of white hair beneath it.
"Imperious sometimes? Yes. I recall once, certainly. That new invention,
the telephone, had been installed at Hollins. It was wonderful,
enabling one to talk to the depot agent at Cloverdale, _three_ miles
away. For the first few days of the new 'fixture,' Miss Matty had
attended to all the preliminaries, so Mr. Cocke had not realized just
what these preliminaries were, or that any were necessary. I saw him
walk up to the transmitter and speak into it, without ringing the bell,
asking a question of the agent. No response, of course. He spoke again.
The same dead silence. Then he right royally tapped the transmitter as
with a rod of office and commanded, 'Here, _answer_ me!' Although I knew
that the ringing of the bell was essential, I had the feeling that some
response _must_ come when Mr. Cocke spoke like that.
"By means of credit and otherwise, he helped me and helped other girls
from my section of Virginia who had less ready money than craving for an
education. The work of one of these, as Foreign Missionary, has been so
good and so big that I love to think that in her, Hollins may have its
reward for what it did for the rest of us. But so utterly did Mr. Cocke
ignore all such benefits conferred by himself that I used to think he
surely must not know about these things, that they must have all been
transacted in the privacy of Mr. Charley's business office. The
President looked so far above any money considerations; and still he
must have been a wonderful financier. Who else could have found the
means of building and maintaining that great Institution without aid of
church or state or millionaire? I never know what to say when asked by
school men how Hollins was financed in the old days. The means must have
been brought down by prayer from Heaven somehow.
"We talk much of the prudence that keeps at a safe distance from the
plague of influenza. That is right, often. But when LaGrippe came from
Russia in 1889 and invaded Hollins, I saw how the suffering was, to some
of the girls, far outweighed by the honor and joy of having Mr. Cocke
himself make the rounds to visit them as if he cared. Cared? I have
looked out into the semi-darkness of the campus and seen that stately
figure, with bowed head, walking up and down beneath the window of the
infirmary, where some girl lay extremely ill, moving to and fro, far
into the night, in a vigil, which, let me say it with reverence, has
made it easier to believe that close to all earth's pains,
"Standeth One within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own."
E. P. C.
Such was the inner life of Hollins. It was and is the loving fellowship
and co-operative industry of a big family, consecrated to true culture,
good citizenship and human progress. It was the life-work of the Good
President, to cheer and help his girls onward to the realization of
these noble ideals.
One day in May, 1901, the sad tidings of Mr. Cocke's death reached them.
Out of the multitude of letters that came to Hollins, all bearing the
same message of sympathetic grief, only a few can be subjoined.
"It is sad, and almost unbearable, to think of Hollins without Mr.
Cocke. And yet, our grief at his death has, mingled with it, a
spirit of thanksgiving for his life. We are so glad that we came
under the influence of that life. I was so young when I first went
to Hollins, and Hollins was my home for so long, that its influence,
the life-example of Mr. Cocke, all, indeed, that made up the
strength and beauty of those days, are woven into every fibre of my
being, have become a part of my very life, so that I know I am
better for having known Hollins, and Mr. Cocke."
R. B.
"For a long time I have realized that I owe more to the influence of
my teachers and friends at Hollins than to all the text-books I have
ever opened, and today I count it one of the greatest blessings of
my life that it was in the pure, elevating atmosphere of Hollins
that I grew into womanhood. To dear Mr. Cocke, the Founder, the
Head, the Life of Hollins, I do now and ever shall feel the deepest
gratitude, and shall ever think of him with reverence, so high has
always been my regard for him. Hundreds of women all over the land
are sorrowing that they will see his noble face no more; for we, his
old pupils, have lost a benefactor, a teacher, a friend."
M. W. C.
"Indeed, a course so nobly run can be as fitly congratulated on its
close--a close pertaining not merely to the finite conditions which
fetter it here, but which, freeing it from these, ushers its powers,
refined, magnified, glorified, into the blessed sphere of attainment
awaiting those who have steadily followed the steps of the Master in
ceaseless effort for the good of man. It is not the note of
lamentation that accords with this grand freeing and glorious
entrance of a friend of man, a soldier of the Cross, into the
kingdom he has won: we rather shout our acclamations for the triumph
of our friend, and drop the tear only that we are for a moment shut
from the comfort of his countenance. We all, in fullest degree,
offer our love and attachment, founded on unspeakable memories of
early and lasting life."
B. D. F.
"I am only one of the hundreds of girls who loved Mr. Cocke dearly,
and honored him beyond the power of words to express. I feel that I
loved him particularly well, more than others did; but perhaps many
others feel the same way. I never knew any other man whose religion
showed so plainly in his daily life. It always seemed to me that he
walked with God. Hollins will never be the same again to the old
girls."
L. J. M.
"I feel sure that all you dear Hollins people know how fully my
heart is with you at this time; but I feel that I must give some
outward expression to the love and sympathy that I feel. Along with
thousands of other old Hollins girls, I know what a great loss the
world has sustained, and what a great and lasting grief has come to
all of us who knew and loved and revered Mr. Cocke. To think of the
thousands of minds and souls he has helped to strengthen and fit out
for life's work! His opportunity was great, and he made the most of
it,--and what higher praise can be given to any man?"
B. P. M. T.
"I have been more distressed than I can tell you to hear of dear Mr.
Cocke's increasing feebleness and dangerous illness, and I have
opened each letter from Hollins with a feeling of dread, always
fearing the worst. But although the sad news, now that it has come,
does not find me unprepared, my grief is no less acute. I know so
well what this loss means not only to the thousands of girls who,
like me, loved him as a father, but to the cause of education and
religion, in which he stood ever as a beacon light. My heart is very
sad when I think of how much goodness and greatness and strength
went out of the world when he was taken. I have not the power to
express in words the grief I feel! I shall always thank God for the
priceless boon of being for a time under the influence of that
consecrated life, and it is my earnest prayer that I may never lose
sight of that blessed example of 'pure religion and undefiled before
God and the Father.'"
E. S. F.
"A friend writes me that Mr. Cocke's work is done, and that today he
is laid to rest, I suppose on the beautiful hill that looks down on
the field of his labors, that field that has borne such beautiful
fruit. We are all distressed, as will be a great many others
throughout the South who have felt the importance in life of a
character like that of Mr. Cocke. If there were more men with like
quality of character and mind, the world would speedily become a
better place. He did what he could to better it, and there are many
left to honor him who have not the strength to do likewise."
L. B. P.
"As one of the many thousands who owe to him unestimated, because
inestimable, blessings, treasures of thought and influence and
inspiration that time can not touch any more than it can dim his
priceless memory, I sorrow today for Hollins' great 'creator,
builder, guide.'"
S. B. D.
"The news of dear Mr. Cocke's death has filled me with sorrow, for I
realize what an inestimable loss the church, the school, his
friends, and his family have sustained. I never knew any one like
him! No one ever laid down a life more filled with good works, and
he has indeed earned the blessed rest which he is now enjoying."
C. M. J.
"The knowledge of such a life is invaluable. We should, we will,
cherish the remembrance of it and hold this among the greatest
object lessons taught us by God. The treasure of his memory would
not be so priceless had his life been one smooth journey. It is the
knowledge of the struggle, the knowledge that a man has fought and
gloriously won in life's severest conflicts, that furnishes us the
incentive, that lends us the inspiration."
A. W.