As an editor and writer his energies were devoted to reconciling North and South, and Johns Hopkins itself had much to do with opening his eyes.

Its young men and its professors were gathered from all parts of the country; a student, if his mind was awake, learned more than Greek and mathematics; he learned much about that far-flung nation known as the United States.
And Page did not confine his work exclusively to the curriculum.

He writes that he is regularly attending a German Sunday School, not, however, from religious motives, but from a desire to improve his colloquial German.

"Is this courting the Devil for knowledge ?" he asks.
And all this time he was engaging in a delightful correspondence--from which these quotations are taken--with a young woman in North Carolina, his cousin.

About this time this cousin began spending her summers in the Page home at Cary; her great interest in books made the two young people good friends and companions.