THE CHAPEL PORTRAITS. TN an address before the Alumni Association in the college IN chapel two years ago General Beaver strongly urged the Alumni to greater energy in upholding and supporting their Alma Mater. Among the means for doing this he emphasized that of procuring suitable portraits of the founders and principal officers of the institution, the men to whom we are so largely in debted for these growing facilities, and by whose energy and fidelity such ample provision has been made for the youth of the State. The suggestion has not as yet borne fruit, but it is hoped that it will not be forgotten, and that the small number of por traits which now adorn the chapel may soon be increased, so that the present generation may have some more fitting idea of what has been done for them and by whom. Indeed, how many of those who have gathered in the chapel from day to day, for, it may be a year or . more, can name half the men whose pictures hang there, or tell anything about them ? Three of them have been presidents of the College, and five members of the board of trustees or warm supporters in the days when friends were few. All were intimately associated with what we may now call the early life of the institution, when, under the name of the Farmer's High School and the Agricul tural College, conditions were sensibly different from what they are now; and each has made a record for some particular service. The first president, Dr. Evan Pugh, gave color and shape to the.rather hastily conceived and somewhat vague plan of a " Farm School." A man with a strong bent in scientific lines, and some knowledge of science education elsewhere, he came upon the stage just in time to prevent a hopeless settling into the rigid ruts of a trade school and conceived a plan, not unlike, in its broad scope and differentiation, that which was ultimately adopted years after ward. But he did not live to carry it into effect, and it never passed beyond a report and recommendation to the board of trustees and an address before a committee of the legislature.
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