Ohio University - Athena Yearbook (Athens, OH)

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Toledo, Wooster, Zanesville, and many other towns and cities in Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illi- nois and in other States. If we were to mention all the prominent places filled by alumni of the O U. in politics, in law and in the ministry, we should exceed the limits allotted. Suffice to say that through- out the Western country the great number of the eminent names winch in early days were those of judges, and attorneys, and barristers, Presbyterian bishops and Methodist elders, are found also in the catalogues of the students of the Ohio Uni- versity. In more recent years it is the Methodist Church that has been more especially served by the vigorous alumni ol this ' ' oldest institution. While many of these are known far and near in the Church, yet two are of especial prominence ; and it would be no disparagement to the others if we mention, by name, these two— par nobilc fratrum —who preside over the publishing interests of their Church in Cincinnati, O.; one the superintendent of the Methodist Publishing House, Rev. Earl Cranston, D.D.; and the other the editor of the Western Christian Advocate, Rev. 1). H. Moore, D. D. — both honored sons of the Ohio University. We must keep in mind, however, that the influence of a college is not limited to its alumni. Of twenty young people that begin the preparatory course of a college, not more than one will continue through the whole curriculum. In the smaller colleges of the Western States ten out of the twenty depart with the second year, never to return. Nevertheless, those who have plodded through Caesar and Euclid have ac- quired strength beyond their neighbors who have never gone to college or the academy ; and they exert greater influence on their associates and in their neighborhood. Who, then, can estimate the influence, as teachers and citizens for seventy-five years, that the thousands who have matriculated at the Ohio LO

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departments in The Wesleyan, Middletown, Conn.; Alle- gheny College, and Washington and Jefferson College, Penn. ; in the Ohio and in the Ohio Wesleyan Universities, and Cin- cinnati Wesleyan, Ohio ; in the State Universities of Indiana, Wisconsin and Missouri; in Vanderbilt University, Tenn.; in Illinois Wesleyan, Bloomington, 111.; in Cornell and Coe Colleges, Iowa ; in the Ohio and in the Miami Medical Colleges, Cincinnati, O., and in the Methodist schools of Utah and Nebraska. These are to day prominent institutions. In early days, however, there were other prominent colleges, which to- day are either not so well known, or have been absorbed by or combined with other schools. Many of these, and others which are to day of modest pretensions, have been served profession- ally by graduates frcm the old Attic college. Indeed, the greatest service which the sons of Cutler ' s university have given their generation has been given often in these humbler positions, where they meet the sons of the farmer and of the mechanic, and of others who can not send their boys to the more pretentious schools, and inspire them with love of learning and truly noble ideals. Thus no one can estimate the value of the service rendered by devoted sons of a noble school to the students of Madison College and Beaver College, Penn.; Wil- mington, Del.; Beverly, Willoughby and Xenia, Ohio; of the Theological Seminaries of Pnnce Edward, Va., and Louisville, Ky.; in Augusta College, Ky.; of Baton Rouge College, La., and Jasper College, Texas ; of Valparaiso College, Union Christian College, Ridgeville College, Ind.; Eureka College, 111.; Amity, Iowa, and College Mound, Mo. Alumni of the Ohio University have also left their impress on the public schools as teachers and principals in high schools, or as superintendents of education, in Athens, Chillicothe, Cleveland, Dayton, Eaton, Gallipolis, Georgetown, Jackson, Kenton, Lebanon, McArthur, Marion, Nelsonville, New Lex- ington, Ottawa, Pomeroy, Portsmouth, Shawnee, Springfield,

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University have exerted in behalf of education and humanity, learning and culture? The history of the college, thus very briefly sketched, was wrought under great difficulties. Unfavorable legislation for many years hindered it from competing with younger and better endowed rivals. For twelve years, however, the State has endeavored to make some reparation for the injury inflicted in the early years of the century, and by its yearly appropria- tions it lias enabled the trustees to build up the different de- partments. The library is receiving hundreds of new volumes each year. The laboratories are thoroughly equipped for original research in all directions. New chairs are established, and the graduates of recent years are prepared to meet the greatest demands made on college graduates by this ambitious and progressive last decade of the nineteenth century.