Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 28.djvu/249

 loyalty and devotion to one who loved the south and believed in the sacredness of the cause which is hers still to defend."

The audience rose as one body to greet Dr. Palmer as he closed, and Mrs D. M. Sholars gracefully moved that a vote of thanks be thus given to the distinguished patriot and divine. It was given with heartfelt feeling, the tears rising to the eyes of many as they looked upon the venerable figure that has stood so long and so faithfully in the front ranks of the smith's veterans, a true exponent of the purity and truth of the cause so dear to his heart.

The evening then resolved itself into a pleasant circle, and the center and thought of the gathering was the picture of Robert Lee, with a wreath of arbor vitae beneath and a bow of Confederate ribbon above, as it smiled down from the platform the same courtly smile that used to light up his features when he saw his old guards gathered around the camp fires in the days of '61-65.

Professor Edward S. Joynes, who holds the chair of Modern Languages at Columbia College, South Carolina, a similar position to that he held at Washington and Lee University, when General Robert E. Lee was President, gives some interesting reminiscences of General Lee in that capacity. Professor Joynes is an uncle of Judge J. Upshur Dennis, of the Baltimore bench. Mr. Joynes says in a letter written to a friend:

"My recollections shall be chiefly of General Lee as a College President. Is is as such that he is chiefly present to my memory always for admiration, sometimes for contrast with later experiences. I will not enlarge upon the quiet dignity and patience with which he always presided over our often wordy and tedious meetings, his perfect impartiality, and unwearied courtesy, his manifest effort to sink his own personality, as if to minimize the influence which he knew