Education: Shrine to Learning

Distinguished gentlemen, dangling golden keys from their watch-chains, made pilgrimage into historic Virginia, to listen at Williamsburg to the mellow accents of Dr. Henry van Dyke, Princeton poet-patriarch; to hear a sweet-voweled memorial poem by Dr. John Erskine of Columbia (author, The Private Life of Helen of Troy and Galahad) ; to attend the prophetic utterance of Dr. Charles Franklin Thwing, president emeritus of Western Reserve University and president of Phi Beta Kappa, who dedicated before the gathering that scholarly brotherhood’s $100,000 memorial auditorium. Dr. Oscar M. Voorhees, secretary of P. B. K.’s united chapters, presented the building to William & Mary College and all soon swarmed through the three-arched brick edifice, admired the fireproof chamber for P. B. K. memorabilia (a replica of the famed Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern, where P. B. K. was founded 150 years ago); the guest rooms, the auditorium, the pictures of the founders of the country’s scholastic hierarchy. There was a festive meal with more speakers of distinction: Dr. John H. Finley of Manhattan, President Edwin A. Alderman of the University of Virginia (representing Governor Byrd), President Mary E. Woolley of Mount Holyoke College. Among others present, though modestly silent, was John D. Rockefeller Jr. whose aid in the society’s current million-dollar endowment drive has not been confined to signing checks but has included extensive travel and speechmaking from city to city.