imagination in a little room. "Caverns," with Keats' descriptive lines on Ailsa Rock, one thinks of as one of the few instances where grandeur, sublimity and awe have been conjured within the compass of a sonnet:

"Aisles and abysses; leagues no man explores,
Of rock that labyrinths and night that drips,
Where everlasting silence broods, with lips
Of adamant, o'er earthquake-builded floors.

*

Here where primordial fear, the Gorgon, sits
Staring all life to stone in ghastly mirth,
I seem to tread with awe no tongue can tell,—
Beneath vast domes, by torrent-tortured pits,
Mid wrecks terrific of the ruined Earth,—

An ancient causeway of forgotten Hell."

A reference has been made to the romantic as well as classic bent of Mr. Cawein's mind. In a number of long poems on mediæval themes he has revived the spirit of romance as well as in his serenades and lighter measures. In a more extended consideration of his work it would be easy to note his success in these fields, a success in recreating the atmosphere and glamour of the days of love and bravery. But much as these achievements of his imagination excite admiration and sustain interest, as they do in "The Son of Evwrac" and "Accolon of Gaul," their appeal is perhaps less than that of other phases of his work upon which emphasis has been laid. The taking of a medieval castle is still a glorious emprize for the imaginative reader, but yet it is no longer the keen delight it once was. It has not the inspiration of some adventure into the "far, the dear-desired" region of ideal beauty, "walled round with morning's amethyst," nor does it give the genuine joy of some return

"Through woodland and through mead To orchards fruited; or to fields in bloom,

Or briery fallows, like a mighty room,
Through which the winds swing censers of perfume,
And where deep blackberries spread miles of fruit;-
A splendid feast that stayed the ploughboy's foot
When to the tasseling acres of the corn
He drove his team, fresh in the primrose morn."

It is in these two expressions of the poetic spirit, a striving to capture some hints of the evasive ideal beauty and the truthful impassioned rendition of the actual rich beauty of the world of nature, that Mr. Cawein at once asserts his own individuality and his kinship with Keats, Shelley and Tennyson with whom his ardent and exquisite talent has most affinity.

Charles D. Mclver

BY WALTER H. PAGE,

Editor of the "World's Work"

While we go on in our routine of life, we judge men by many standards-whether they are successful and are doing their tasks well; or are of service to their fellows and to society; or are interesting and helpful companions; or are courageous. Almost every rule that we have is more or less modified by the personality of the man to whom it is applied. We even suspend judgment on one another waiting to see how each of us continues to do his task or to live his life.

But, when death startles us and cuts a career short and we must measure the dead man once for all, we find ourselves asking first of all the one question, how true and helpful he was to his friends, to his community and to human kind; for that is the highest test after all.

Apply that test to Dr. Charles D. McIver and he measures so large-he reaches the full proportions of a great nature.

I suppose that he was regarded as a close personal friend by more men and women, and he had the intimate confidence of more men and women, than any other man in North Carolina. Whoever knew him came close to him. The man who was most engrossed and the slow fellow who had merely dull and intermittent impulses to be of some use in the word each alike counted him a friend. He was a brother to every human creature. When you or I say, then, that we have lost one of our best friends, we are but two of a great host of men and women who are saying the same thing. Now this genius for helpfulness is a quality of only very great natures.

Think, too, of the cheerfulness and of the hopefulness of the man! That also is a mark of his great nature. His beaming, buoyant personality was a form of courage that never flagged; it was a constant inspiration to everybody whom it reached, and it reached far.

At Greensboro, on the day when he was buried, there were men prominent in educational work from Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and New York, who through their tears fell to telling humorous anecdotes that illustrated his unbounded cheerfulness and kindliness. Not one could have recalled, if he had tried, a single bitter thing that he had said or a single unworthy act that he had done. They called him affectionately "Charles" or "Mac"-these leaders in educational work. What a tribute to a man that his friends should laugh and weep at once as they mourned his loss-what a touching evidence that he touched the fundamental emotions!

His own heavy burdens, which he carried as only the bravest men can carry burdens, were never visible; and that also was a mark of a big character. I doubt if any man can recall Charles McIver's uttering a single complaining word.

But these qualities of companionship and kindliness and cheerfulness and bravery are not all that come to mind in the grateful and affectionate memory that we who loved him shall ever have of him. He had another quality that only large men have he was a builder of things. He did not work aimlessly. We have had no man among us who carried a truer singleness of purpose or who had a more definite aim in life than he call it an inspiration or a vision, or a business, as you like it was all these. He moulded out of the public opinion of North Carolina a great institution, which embodied a clear cut idea and was founded on a definite philosophy of human progress. It is a noble idea, too; for the State Normal and Industrial College for Women was literally made by him out of the opinion of the State as the bricks in its buildings were made out of clay by their moulders. Everybody who knew him had heard him expound his doctrine of the right training of women-heard his arraignment of modern life not in North Carolina only nor in particular, but of modern society in generalfor its neglect of women. About this he had the zeal of a crusader. Think how few other men in North Carolina or in other States, have ever built outright a great institution;

and you have a measure of the man. He built it once forever, too, for he planted it deep in the affections of the people and especially the women.

Twice he had a chance possibly to become President of the State University, but he considered his work in building a college for women, of greater importance. He might at any time during the last six or eight years, have received an income that would have relieved him of all financial care and provided luxuriously for his family if he had given his time to business undertakings. He was even advised by some of his closest friends to accept such an offer. But the building and the development of a great college for the training of women (and by the training of women, the lifting up of the whole people) was dearer to him than all other aims in life; and he never hesitated.

That, too, was the work of a great nature-that he took his pleasure in building a worthy institution and not in his personal comfort nor in the advancement of any personal ambition or wish for future honor.

May I say frankly here that the State must learn to pay men, who fill positions like his, much higher salaries than it now pays. Else it will not always get the services of the best men. Dr. McIver was a pitifully underpaid public servant. The State has passed the place where it need be niggardly or can afford to be niggardly to its great public

servants.

And he had the quality not only of a builder, but another high quality still-the quality of a popular leader. There is no way of accurately measuring his influence in developing public sentiment in North Carolina in particular, but in other States as well, to public educational activity and to a higher life for all the people. Outside the State, he was, I think, everywhere regarded as the most influential leader of the people for popular education that this generation of men has known.

A rare genius for friendship, a cheerful and uplifting personality, a high and absorbing purpose which admitted of no unselfishness, the great faculty of a builder of institutions and the great faculty of leading public opinion for the highest aims-Charles McIver had all these; and any