Virginia Intermont College - Intermont Yearbook (Bristol, VA)

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SENSE A NE NONSENSE. 9 and well-being of the Institute much at heart, being in close touch with Dr. Harrison and in the sunshine of his fervor and enthusiasm, not to speak of the subtle influence of Mrs. Jones, who always shared her father’s causes and made his hopes and ambitions hers. Mr. Jones, with the keen discernment of the professional man and with the prophetic insight of the lawyer, realized the fine possibilities that were latent in the life of the school. When in 1889 the presidency was offered him, he found himself confronted with a perplexing problem. Perhaps Mrs. Jones was the power behind the throne, perhaps Dr. Harrison, our Anchises — perhaps Fate that urged our H£neas to brave the inevitable storms and difficulties and place our colors foremost and permanent among the colleges of this land. It was no small sacrifice to give up a healthy and lucrative law practice, a chosen and loved profession, and enter a new and untried field of labor. The Institute then was but an infant, but evinced unmis- takable signs of precocity and future greatness. It needed but a fostering hand to take the youngling and steady its first steps. Southwest Virginia Institute, born under a lucky star, has always been fortunate, but the good-luck vein in her career was never more successfully sounded than when Mr. Samuel D. Jones declared he would take the toddler under his fostering care and protection. Perceiving at once the delicacy and greatness of the responsibility he was asked to shoulder, he was like — “The traveler that setteth on his journey oppressed with many thoughts, Balancing his hopes and fears, and looking for some order in the chaos - He walketli straight, in fervent faith, and difficulties vanish at his presence ; Confident and sanguine of success he goetli forth conquering and to conquer — While the labor lasted, while the race was running Many times the sinews ached and half refused the struggle, But now all is quietness, a pleasant hour given to repose, Calmness in the retrospect of good and calmness in the prospect of a blessing. Hope was glad in the beginning and fear was sad midway, But sweet fruition cometh in the end a harvest safe and sure. Uncertainty no more can scare, the proof is seen complete, Thus the end shall crown the work with grace, grace unto the top stone The work shall triumph in its crown with peace, peace unto the builder.

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s SENSE A ND NONSENSE. thousands and tens of thousands ; hence we particularize the one from among the ten thousands and the chiefest of them all and say that this edition is dedicated to our beloved president, our wise coun- sellor, our faithful teacher, and our loyal friend. Mr. Samuel D. Jones was born on the twenty-seventh day of May, 1857, in Campbell County, Virginia. He graduated at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Virginia, in 1878, and at Rich- mond College in 1879. A Virginian by birth, education, and asso- ciation, a fact that evinces itself in all of his relations, his genial and unstudied hospitality, his broad charitableness, his warmheart- edness, his convictions steadfast and clear, his unswerving earnest- ness, his happy faculty of letting his fatherliness for the girls shine through and temper all the judgments of the disciplinarian — of combining consideration and firmness, stoutness of will and deter- mination with kindness. His robe of authority is so truly a Joseph’s coat in which harmoniously blend the colorings of justness, upright- ness, unchanging purpose and gentleness, that there is no feeling of rebellion toward the judge, so surely do we know the sincerity and largeness of his heart. For he is made on a generous scale, mind and soul and body, and as Webster once said of Calhoun : ‘ ‘ He possesses the indisputable basis of all high character — nothing groveling low or meanly selfish ever came near his head or heart.” The girls know him as a ready sharer in their pleasures and joys, and a quick sympathizer in all troubles and griefs. They know him as a confidant, worthy of utmost trust and as a companion genial, conservative and ready. Sociability is as natural to him as breathing and his office has oftener served as an after-tea rendezvous for bright-humored groups than an assembly-room for those dreaded conventions known as ‘ ‘ faculty meetings. ’ ’ Since his marriage in 1883, to Miss Bettie Harrison, eldest daughter of Rev. J. R. Harrison, the honored and much loved founder of Southwest Virginia Institute, Mr. Jones has had the interest

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10 SENSE AND NONSENSE. Born, cradled and reared at Glade Spring, the Institute out- grew the vestments of its childhood, and in new robes it made its debut in Bristol — boasting a curriculum second to none — competing with the male, and outstripping the Southern female colleges. Mr. Jones has always occupied the chair of m ental and moral philosophy and logic, and it is in that capacity that he garners the rewards of his sowing. He sees for himself the work the school is doing. When he applies the touchstone of his teaching to the minds glowing in a healthy perspiration, and fresh from other departments it is as teacher that he knows he is laying the cornerstone in many a polished marble palace of character. He believes each mind in itself a Klondike, without its famine, without its cold, without its bankrupt seekers after the yellow lucre. Its food is knowledge, its fires, the ardor of inquiring minds, and the enthusiasm and zeal of ambition. He leads the delvers through the devious ways of learn- ing. He points out to them with patient care the veins of precious metals. He shows that the glittering sandhills that allure the unwary and unwise with its thousand twinkling eyes embosom but worthless soil, and under surfaces rough and forbidding only deep down in the breast of earth beats the heart of pure gold which only can be reached with pickaxe and spade. But once possessed, it is beyond the price of empires, and the largest purchaser of Life’s rarest and fairest gems, Happiness and Contentment, and the name of this treasure of the Soul is Truth — and this is our Mr. Jones. Even as he bears aloft in a golden train of golden deeds the single golden standard of spotless integrity and honor, unimpeached, his own example and golden rule will paint on his Life’s sky a glowing, living picture in colors rich, warm and unfading. A scene whose breadth will margin every cloud with a golden border — of hues so bright as to penetrate and illumine every care-laden shadow, so lasting as to defy the washings of all storms and every one of his eleven hundred girls who proudly carry the orange into twenty-three States