[ [70] The memorial was written entirely by Doctor Peter, the map was mostly copied from one published about that time by a Mr. Byrem Lawrence, who traveled and lectured on Geology in Kentucky and who subsequently went to Arkansas and made observations on its Geology, etc., and, as the writer believes, died there.
[ [71] See Kentucky Geological Survey, Volume I, N. S., Page 143.
[ [72] See Volume I, N. S., Page 143.
[ [73] Doctor Owen says: "The principal operating room in which Dr. P. made his analyses is 15 feet square, the working and balance tables stand within three feet of each other, and the furnace, sand, and water baths three feet from the former, so that one or two steps suffice to reach all important parts of the different operations in their various stages of progression. The reagents constantly in use ... in a case resting on the working table within arm's reach of the operator, and his recording desk in a drawer of the same table." This laboratory was in the north-west corner of the Medical Hall, corner of Broadway and Second Street. Doctor Owen, zealous to defend Doctor Peter, explains further that the latter was aided by a more than common physical as well as mental aptitude. Doctor Peter took no part in this defense save to extend to the skeptics an invitation to visit his laboratory and examine his manner of working.
[ [74] I must acknowledge that the expression "shoulder to shoulder" is a mere figure of speech as regards "Uncle Davy" Sayre, for he usually attended the drills in a buggy in subservience to his gout, being thereby rendered immune from the consequences suffered by his dignified compatriots of sundry knots tied, by youthful humorists, in the long grass of the classic "little college lot," the favorite drill ground of the Home Guard, as it had been of Morgan's Rifles and other military companies. This "college lot" was none other than the original "out lot No. 6," the first seat of Transylvania, and was the identical spot whereon had taught the immortal Holley. Madison C. Johnson was "conspicuous" for his sky-blue blouse of fine material, which stood forth in the ranks of common dark blue cotton, and must have been a mark for the enemy had the celebrated battle for the arms hereinafter mentioned ever taken place.
[ [75] See Kentucky Geological Survey, Volume IV, N. S., Pages 18, 65, and 66; also Volume III, N. S., Page 391.
[ [76] Mr. Bowman says, in a letter to Doctor Peter, April 20, 1876: "If my life is spared I will work on until by national and State aid, if not denominational, I will lay broad and deep the foundations of a great, free, liberal, unsectarian university for all classes and professions of this people and abreast with the advanced curriculum of the best institutions of our century."
[ [77] In the heat of contest Doctor Peter's adversaries did not hesitate to call him an infidel and an atheist. It was the worst they could say, but not strictly in conformity with the facts. He was not a church member. He had been baptized in the Church of England, always kept a pew in the Episcopal Church, and as a young man taught in the Episcopal Sunday-school. The spectacle, in so many instances, of the impediment to educational progress by narrowness and bigotry in churches had given him an indifference—not disguised—to sectarian religion. He never molested the religious tenets of others. He constantly declared that education should be free to all men, irrespective of creed.
[ [78] Antagonists in this controversy, powerless to assail him as a scientist and teacher, characterized him as a person of low origin and brutal manners. He ignored this attack, it being his custom never to lean upon ancestors—to look forward rather than back, holding to the homely but truly American saying that "every tub must stand on its own bottom." But in truth he was of excellent English family and a descendant of that powerful "Arundel" who in the days of the Conquest was master of twenty-eight lordships. His manners passed muster among old-fashioned Kentucky gentlemen.
[ [79] Doctor Cross was appointed to a chair in the Transylvania Medical Faculty by the influence of Reverend Nathan H. Hall, a trustee, and against the judgment of other members of the Board.