The ill-starred Poe attended the university for only one
year, at the end of which time his adopted father, Mr. Allan, of
Richmond, withdrew him because of debts he had contracted while
acquiring his education in gambling and drinking champagne. Poe's former
room, No. 13 West Range, is now the office of the magazine.
The clean, lovely manuscript in Jefferson's handwriting, of the first
Anglo-Saxon grammar written in the United States, is to be seen in the
university library; Jefferson was Vice-President of the United States
when he wrote it; he put Anglo-Saxon in the first curriculum of the
university, and it has been taught there ever since. In a note which is
a part of the manuscript, he advocates the study of Anglo-Saxon as an
introduction to modern English on the ground that though about half the
words in our present language are derived from Latin and Greek, these
being the scholarly words, the other half, the words we use most often,
are Anglo-Saxon.
Before the war it was not uncommon for students at the university to
have their negro body servants with them, and it has occasionally
happened since that some young sprig of southern aristocracy has come
to college thus attended.
Perhaps the most striking and characteristic feature of student life
to-day, from the point of view of the stray visitor, is the formal
attitude of students toward one another.
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