Several of the strongest personalities that were ever born in North Carolina were men whose very fathers were unknown.

We have all known two such, who held high places in Church and State.

President Eliot said a little while ago that the ablest man that he had known in his many years' connection with Harvard University was the son of a brick mason." In place of the ecclesiastical creed that had guided North Carolina for so many generations Page proposed his creed of democracy.

He advised that North Carolina commit this to memory and teach it to its children.
It was as follows: "I believe in the free public training of both the hands and the mind of every child born of woman.
"I believe that by the right training of men we add to the wealth of the world.

All wealth is the creation of man, and he creates it only in proportion to the trained uses of the community; and the more men we train the more wealth everyone may create.
"I believe in the perpetual regeneration of society, and in the immortality of democracy and in growth everlasting." Thus Page nailed his theses upon the door of his native state, and mighty was the reverberation.