"By means of credit and otherwise, he helped me and helped other girls from my section of Virginia who had less ready money than craving for an education. The work of one of these, as Foreign Missionary, has been so good and so big that I love to think that in her, Hollins may have its reward for what it did for the rest of us. But so utterly did Mr. Cocke ignore all such benefits conferred by himself that I used to think he surely must not know about these things, that they must have all been transacted in the privacy of Mr. Charley's business office. The President looked so far above any money considerations; and still he must have been a wonderful financier. Who else could have found the means of building and maintaining that great Institution without aid of church or state or millionaire? I never know what to say when asked by school men how Hollins was financed in the old days. The means must have been brought down by prayer from Heaven somehow.
"We talk much of the prudence that keeps at a safe distance from the plague of influenza. That is right, often. But when LaGrippe came from Russia in 1889 and invaded Hollins, I saw how the suffering was, to some of the girls, far outweighed by the honor and joy of having Mr. Cocke himself make the rounds to visit them as if he cared. Cared? I have looked out into the semi-darkness of the campus and seen that stately figure, with bowed head, walking up and down beneath the window of the infirmary, where some girl lay extremely ill, moving to and fro, far into the night, in a vigil, which, let me say it with reverence, has made it easier to believe that close to all earth's pains,
"Standeth One within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own."
E. P. C.
Such was the inner life of Hollins. It was and is the loving fellowship and co-operative industry of a big family, consecrated to true culture, good citizenship and human progress. It was the life-work of the Good President, to cheer and help his girls onward to the realization of these noble ideals.
One day in May, 1901, the sad tidings of Mr. Cocke's death reached them. Out of the multitude of letters that came to Hollins, all bearing the same message of sympathetic grief, only a few can be subjoined.
"It is sad, and almost unbearable, to think of Hollins without Mr. Cocke. And yet, our grief at his death has, mingled with it, a spirit of thanksgiving for his life. We are so glad that we came under the influence of that life. I was so young when I first went to Hollins, and Hollins was my home for so long, that its influence, the life-example of Mr. Cocke, all, indeed, that made up the strength and beauty of those days, are woven into every fibre of my being, have become a part of my very life, so that I know I am better for having known Hollins, and Mr. Cocke."
R. B.
"For a long time I have realized that I owe more to the influence of my teachers and friends at Hollins than to all the text-books I have ever opened, and today I count it one of the greatest blessings of my life that it was in the pure, elevating atmosphere of Hollins that I grew into womanhood. To dear Mr. Cocke, the Founder, the Head, the Life of Hollins, I do now and ever shall feel the deepest gratitude, and shall ever think of him with reverence, so high has always been my regard for him. Hundreds of women all over the land are sorrowing that they will see his noble face no more; for we, his old pupils, have lost a benefactor, a teacher, a friend."
M. W. C.