Mississippi College - Tribesman Yearbook (Clinton, MS)

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iTLf¥is rm ((°5)= il President John William Provine, M. A., Ph. D., L.L. D. B. S., University of Mississippi, 1888; M. A., ibid., 1890; Ph. D., Goettingen, 1892 ; Fellow in Chemistry, University of Mississippi, 1888-89; Chair of Chemistry, Mississippi College, 1893; President Mississippi College, 1911. — 10

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rraar 3 n -is.. it would have done credit to those of maturer years and much more experience. I would show him the ermine of a Supreme Court judge, so modestly and so effi- ciently worn by one of the sons of this great institution. I would call his attention to the nine able sons in our state senate, and to as many more in the house of repre- sentatives. I would direct him to a half dozen or more college presidents who claim Mississippi College as the dynamo whence came their power. I would mention by the score, teachers in public schools and colleges who are making their impress upon the men and women of this generation. T. hen I would take him to every town and hamlet in this state and show him some of the manifestation of the power generated by the great power plant at Clinton, in the lawyers at the bar, in the doctors with the patient, in the business men in banks and stores, in the farmers on their well im- proved farms. Finally, I would carry him to the churches, and let him listen to the truth as it is being proclaimed by hundreds of Mississippi College’s sons; their mes- sages burning with love, their hearts pulsating with interest for their fellows, their souls aflame with the passion of eternity. Should the now believing friend ask me the secret of this institution’s power, I would tell him, that in the first place she has never offered any short cuts to glory, or any by-ways to success. While others have sacrificed scholarship for numbers, Mississippi College has never made one bid at the cost of efficiency. Her curriculum has always been full throughout the entire four years, her instruction has always been thorough. In the second place, the environment has made a very large contribution. Edu- cation is largely atmospheric. The University of Athens, in its era of supremacy in the first and second centuries, could not have flourished elsewhere. Rome was in- evitable. The University of Alexandria was well located for its time. So Missis- sippi College located in the Athens of Mississippi, where every hill is full of historic interest, where the atmosphere is purer, the sun shines brighter, the flowers bloom more sweetly than in any other place in the world. The very air is electric with spiritual power. If a boy comes here scoffing, he leaves praying. It is simply irre- sistible. It is the invisible that makes a great institution. Great men make an in- stitution great, and the qualities that make great men are invisible. Long may Mississippi College live! that she shall hold up an idealism of the best in human life; that she shall permeate our industrial system; permeate our com- merce; permeate the growing thousands with the desire for the higher enjoyment and best expression of intellectual and spiritual life, and that all that touch her shall be- come lovers of art, lovers of nature, lovers of all that is best and divinest in the earthly life. 9

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History of Mississippi College A MILL or a factory may be made set in operation, at once perfect in all its appointments, but a college is a product of years growth, for it must not only prove its right to existence but the test of time, but it must gather around it a certain coterie and sentiment sufficient for its life and development. As “in com- mon life we observe that the circumstance of utility is always appealed to,” so it should be with any sort of institution making an appeal to the public for life and patronage. The fulfillment of its purpos es and promises in service rendered to man- kind and to society should be the test of its right and eulogy, and unless it can make some record of usefulness to the public, it has no claim to live. In 1826, at Mt. Salus (now Clinton), there was founded a school under cor- porate name of Hemstead academy. In the following January, President F. G. Hopkins, with an attendance of abou thirty students, formally opened the first ses- sion. In February the name of the institution was changed to Mississippi Academy. In 1829, Daniel Comfort was chosen president, whose excellent character and su- perior ability as a teacher is admirably illustrated by the following extract taken from the biography of Albert Gallatin Hrown, thirteenth governor of Mississippi “In February, 1829, having made tolerable proficiency in the rudiments of an Eng- lish education and given evidence of sprightliness, his father consented with as much readiness as was consistent with his limited means to send him to Mississippi Acad- emy, then a respectable school under the management of that excellent man and pure Christian, the Rev. D. Comfort. Here he remained three years.” In 1830, the academy had gained sufficient reputation to guarantee the dignity of being called a college, so the name was changed to Mississippi College, the name it has so honorably borne through all the vicissitudes of its strenuous and eventful existence. The purposes of the founders of the institution and its policy until 1850, were co-educational, so at the June commencement in 1835, two young ladies, Misses Lu- cinda F. Bagley, of Covington, La., and Carolina H. Coulner, of Vicksburg, Miss., were the first graduates. It is thought that these bear the distinction of being the first degrees ever conferred by an institution in Mississippi. The next session, ten young ladies were graduated, among the number being Miss Harriet N. Battle, who afterward became the mother of the Honorable Frank Johnston, at one time Attor- ney General of Mississippi. In 1837, the college became financially embarrassed, and all the faculty re- signed. Another faculty was organized with Professor H. Dwight, as the president, assisted by his wife, and Miss Potter. In 1841, the Mississippi conference of the Methodist church was planning to establish Centenary College. The Mississippi College board of trustees offered to donate to the conference the college “with all its improvements and apparatus and a bonus of $20,000. The offer was declined by the locating committee by a vote of one majority.” During all these years the college was the property of the town of Clinton, under the management of a self-perpetuating board of trustees. 11