Page:The North Carolina Historical Review - Volume 1, Number 1.pdf/25

Rh useful and honorable. It would be absurd to say that Lincoln and Roosevelt owed their fame to those political accidents, and to dismiss the matter at the point.

There was an old lady of whom it was said that she asked the Lord each day to "prepare us for that which was being prepared for us." It is evident enough that, in the case of men whose names are deservedly written large in our annals, the important thing has been that they had so prepared themselves that they could meet situations as they arose. Training for usefulness was the text upon which Page preached his best sermons; and, as it came to pass, his own career exemplified the doctrine.

To the very end, Walter Hines Page was in personality an unmistakable son of North Carolina. Not all North Carolinians are physically tall, of rugged frame and rather massive build, but there are many of that type, and Page was one of them. If you will take the family names that prevailed in North Carolina, as shown in the census of 1790, you will discover in your State today literally thousands upon thousands of their descendants who are of an American type almost or quite as distinctive as the English type of Yorkshiremen. I have already implied in what I have said that Page's was a mentality of restraint, independent in judgment, strong in sense of justice, resourceful in face of emergencies. He had always a marked dislike of narrow conventionality, and always a robust hold upon such primal virtues as are expressed in the words loyalty, honor, humanity. In short, he was a man of physical and metal virility, cast by nature in a generous mold.

It has been a pleasure to me to have obtained for use on this occasion the expressions of several men who knew Page in particular relationships. No one was more intimately associated with him during a long term of years than Dr. Wallace Buttrick of the General Education Board. It is Dr. Buttrick who reminded me afresh of the Birmingham speech. The following sentences are written by a man of great heart and unsparing service, about an associate for whom he felt a deep affection as well as a great regard: