The democratic spirit of the Institution Mr. Cocke constantly cultivated, and with profound satisfaction he welcomed students from the homes of rich and poor. All entered on terms of equality in privilege and opportunity. The rich girl of common sense and industry won popularity and honor; and by the same token the poor girl gained the love of classmates and the medals of distinction. At no institution was there more contempt for snobbery or for the spirit of favoritism. Moral and intellectual worth were the sole tests of credit and high standing.
His interest followed the students, and he smiled at the tidings of their usefulness. He counted on their private and public values in society. Some, he was fond of saying, had become the wives of ministers, of lawyers and judges, of officers of the Army and of the Navy, of political leaders and of distinguished men in all ranks and professions. With pride, he spoke of those who were teaching in the schools and colleges, and of those who had gone into the far mission fields of the world. In his heart the grand old man felt: "They are all my daughters, and the sweetest benedictions be on every one." You will never meet the daughters of Hollins, old or young, whose faces do not light up at the mention of his name, or that of the dear place where many of life's holiest memories were stored. When old Hollins girls meet—whether as bosom cronies, after years of separation, or as strangers at some Exposition, gazing through tears at a portrait—a listener need but catch fragments of their reminiscences to know how Mr. Cocke's personality glows in the memory of his "gyrls."
"Could we ever forget how he used to read the hymns at evening worship? Nobody else could, or can, read them as he did:
Guide me, O thou great Jehovah—
My hope is built on nothing less,
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness—
In the Cross of Christ I glory,
Towering o'er the wrecks of time—
This last always with an unconscious lifting of the head in his vision of the glory one day to be revealed. It meant much to look, once a day, on a colossal faith like his. Was it due to those unbroken, silent trysts with his Savior in the chapel, in the early morning?"
"Latin and mathematics were always second to the Bible with Mr. Cocke," testifies another. "He was certainly never afraid of the 'hard-grained muses' for us. I once heard him say, with a touch of regret, 'The next generation in our country will produce many more readers, but fewer scholars.' He revered true learning and made us revere it, however little some of us possessed it. Scholarship with him was no musty work, smelling of the midnight oil. He never laughed at it as odd or pedantic. It was, in his mind, never dissociated from service; but scholarship was a high thing, and he flung out the work as a challenge to the best within us.
"One now laughs to recall her own mental protests, as a new girl, when Mr. Cocke would so earnestly tell her fellow-students that they would be leaders in their communities, in their states. 'How mistaken Mr. Cocke is about this,' I would say to myself. 'He doesn't know this year's girls. He is thinking about those women who shone out so brilliantly here two, four, ten, thirty years ago—those stars in the crown of Hollins. But these girls are just ordinary people. The best of them don't even know their lessons every time—not to mention the rest of us. They could never lead communities. Great women would be necessary for that.' But those girls have been real leaders, just as Mr. Cocke said. They were nothing but girls, just like other girls, but they did, many of them, go forth to lead and to lead straight. It may be that they had from him some touch of his power; it may be that he opened their eyes to the fact that there is, after all, nobody else to do most of these things except just plain humanity. There really is nobody else, you know.
"And Mr. Cocke's dignity withal—how cheap have many other men looked to my eyes when set beside my image of him! It is like that fabled measuring rod which made inflated pride shrink to its true stature. Mr. Cocke was the only man I ever saw who really seemed equal to wearing a high hat. I have watched the throng of the genteel coming down Broadway in their Sunday best and have thought, 'Not a man of you looks right in it—looks wholly free from affectation.' To him it was as natural as the crown of white hair beneath it.
"Imperious sometimes? Yes. I recall once, certainly. That new invention, the telephone, had been installed at Hollins. It was wonderful, enabling one to talk to the depot agent at Cloverdale, three miles away. For the first few days of the new 'fixture,' Miss Matty had attended to all the preliminaries, so Mr. Cocke had not realized just what these preliminaries were, or that any were necessary. I saw him walk up to the transmitter and speak into it, without ringing the bell, asking a question of the agent. No response, of course. He spoke again. The same dead silence. Then he right royally tapped the transmitter as with a rod of office and commanded, 'Here, answer me!' Although I knew that the ringing of the bell was essential, I had the feeling that some response must come when Mr. Cocke spoke like that.