culture, of inchoate civilization, that it should lift its thoughts to art, literature, and science, when such a grave and instant and desperate problem as African slavery lay unsolved before it. Nearly twenty years had now elapsed since Mr. Rollins had been in a public position to champion the cause of the University, though all the while, in private station, as citizen, he had fostered the disinherited child of the State with the friendliest attentions. Now, however, upon resuming his seat in the halls of legislation he showed all his old-time ardor in its behalf. It was he who framed, introduced, and pressed forward to successful issue all the measures for the relief of the University. Such were the appropriation of $10,000 to rebuild the president's house, which had been destroyed by fire, and, what was far more considerable, of 134 per centum of the State's revenue, less 25 per centum of the same already designated for the support of the common schools. It was not alone that this wise enactment secured an addition of about $16,000 yearly for the maintenance of the University, thus at one stroke more than trebling its annual income, but much more significantly it secured a distinct and unequivocal recognition from the State itself that the seminary seated at Columbia was the University of the State of Missouri which the State was constitutionally pledged to maintain-a recognition resolutely denied to the pleading of Switzler in 1865, nor hitherto at any time more than passively conceded. Up to March the 11th, 1867, when this bill became a law, life and death had been casting dice over the University. It was meet that the same statesman whose youthful enthusiasm had founded it should now, twenty-eight years later, in a rugged crisis redeem it by his maturer wisdom. An admirable feature of this statute was the increasing provision that it made for the increasing wants of the University, keeping step with the increasing resources of the State; too good it was, indeed, to last, and subsequent legislation has failed to preserve it.

There was still another act framed by the same hand, promoted by the same persons, passed at the same session, and approved on the same day- the act establishing the Normal Department in the University. This measure was wisely conceived and well intended to bring gradually into being a special class of teachers not only equipped with adequate knowledge, but carefully instructed in the highest art of their profession; its immediate reaction would be upon

the primary and secondary schools throughout the State, while only its remoter effects could be felt in the increased and improved attendance at the University; but its final utility would, of course, depend mainly upon the manner of its execution.

Even this was not all, however. It was during this session of the General Assembly that Mr. Rollins brought forward a bill to establish the Agricultural and Mechanical College as a department of the University, and to vest in the Board of Curators the 330,000 acres of land with which the Act of Congress of July 2, 1862, had endowed it, an act that he himself had aided in passing. Mr. Rollins urged the passage of this important bill by all manner of suasion, but a minority of the House remained unshakably rooted in hostility to Boone County, pleading the disloyalty of its citizens, though possibly controlled by a straiter patriotism, and determined not to promote even its educational interests. As early as January 24, 1866, in a letter to State Senator Muench, Mr. Rollins had overborne every rational objection to the union of the College with the University, and had shown the mutual advantages to be derived from their association; in a speech in the House, March 9, 1867, he had vigorously refuted the charge of peculiar disloyalty brought against his fellow-citizens. All, however, was of no avail, and on the 20th of March, 1867, by a vote of 62 ayes to 57 noes the bill failed of a majority of the whole House.

Rollins had no desire to return to the Legislature, being much chagrined by the defeat of this measure, but the nominee of his party, the Conservative, for the Senatorial District of Audrain, Boone, and Callaway Counties, Mr. David H. Hickman, having been disfranchised, his own name was substituted against his wishes. almost on the eve of the election. The rival candidate was no other than the Supervisor of Registration, Mr. Conklin, who, unalterably set on preserving the ballot free from every taint of disloyalty, had in conjunction with the county registrars disfranchised four out. of every five voters by erasing their names from the lists of registration! He had blundered egregiously, however, on the side of moderation, in not erasing the fifth one also, for the returns showed him defeated by a large majority. It was nothing but human nature that he should appeal to the Legislature, which was of his own political complexion, to save him from the consequences of his own

misplaced confidence and excessive generosity. Long and bitterly he contested the election, but it was too late; the error was irreparable, and the Senate finally by a unanimous vote confirmed the election of Rollins. It was then proposed to present Mr. Conklin a consolation purse of $208 (mileage) as a slight recognition of his brilliant and conscientious, however partial and ineffective, efforts to preserve the ballot immaculate from infection of treason. The beneficiary of his laxity, Mr. Rollins, with singular lack of magnanimity, opposed the motion, emphasizing such trivial though wellattested and finally conceded facts, as that Mr. Conklin was all along consciously ineligible to the office in question; that he was consciously disqualified as a voter; that in taking the oath as Superintendent of Registration he had consciously sworn falsely; that he had fled from Missouri to Iowa and from Iowa to Missouri to escape military service in the United States army. Such purely ethical considerations might, indeed, when presented with vehemence, move a sympathetic gallery to applause; but not so easily a Senate, sedate and accustomed to look below the merely moral character down into the political import of an action. By a vote of 21 to 9 the resolution was carried. Let us hope that the amount sufficed and was piously applied to deliver him by railway finally and forever from an inappreciative constituency.

And now once more began the struggle over the location of the Agricultural and Mechanical College, in the introduction by Mr. Rollins of his bill to engraft it on the University. The intensity of the opposition had not in the mean time abated, neither was it of a nature to be broken by any weight of argument. Otherwise the reiterated proofs of Rollins and Russell, Switzler, Todd, and Read, in the forum and in the press, would have been enough. But they were not nearly sufficient, and availed in no wise to shake the interested prejudices of the average legislator. When his victim proved plainly to the hotel-keeper that his bill was exorbitant beyond all reason, the latter smiled sweetly and replied, "But, my dear friend, you see I need the money." The administration of the whole body of public trusts was regarded as an enormous Christmas pie; and why should Boone County, having already pulled out one of the finest plums, insist on pulling out another? Perceiving that the bill could not pass in a form unmutilated by amendments, Mr. Rollins

now began to make judicious concessions, and chief among them that one-fourth of the proceeds from the sale of land should be given to a School of Mines, which was afterward founded at Rolla as part of the University. Other provisos required certain large gifts of land and money from the County of Boone, which together actually reached the sum of $90,000. The fact was that an eager rivalry for the location of the College had sprung up among a number of counties, and bids of as much as $200,000 were made by Jackson, Greene, and others. Against such competition the very adroitest management was necessary to secure the consolidation of the highest institutes of learning at Columbia. The ideal problems of pure mathematics may often be solved exactly; the actual problems that arise in its applications can at best be solved only approximately. So in civics and the higher politics the ends of exact Justice and Right must be kept clearly and steadily in view and must be constantly aimed at; but we must often rest content with only partial attainment. Compromise is necessary to practical statesmanship, which is always more or less a wise opportunism.

The original bill, decorated with twenty-four amendments, was put to final vote and carried on the 10th of February, 1870, wherewith a legislative contest of four years was ended. It remained to arouse the people of his county to meet the obligations imposed by the enactment, by no means a light or easy matter. To this task Mr. Rollins addressed himself in an elaborate letter to the County Judges, under date of March 14, 1870, the Assembly being yet in session, in which he defends his concessions and urges the county to action by convincing reasons. He also repels the charges of interested motives that had been brought against him, and vindicates the uprightness and straightforwardness of his conduct. The response of his fellowcitizens was gratifying. All the conditions of the bill were promptly met, and the Agricultural and Mechanical College was permanently engrafted upon the University. So bitter, however, was the disappointment of the rival counties that a call for separation has more than once made itself heard, though of course not heeded. If the College has not quite flourished according to ardent wishes, not to say reasonable expectations, the explanation is not to be sought in its amalgamation with the University, but rather in the inadequacy of State support, as also in a certain congenital logical error, a confu

sion of notions, which afflicts both it and its fellows throughout the Union. The sales of land have thus far reached the sum of $312,000; about 60,000 acres remain unsold, which may raise the total to $400,000. The recent Act of Congress, which has just received the Presidential signature, will yield at the maximum, when deduction is made for the support of a negro Seminary, about $20,000 per year, equivalent to an additional sum of $400,000 invested at 5 per centum. Accordingly, this important measure has practically endowed the University at the hands of the general Government with $700,000. If the Experiment Station, as succursal to the Agricultural College, be counted with its income of $15,000, the yield of $300,000, it will appear that the total consequential practical endowment secured to the University at Columbia from the general Government by four years of legislative struggle on the part of Rollins and those about him foots up the very considerable sum of $1,000,000.

This was much the most difficult of all his legislative achievements, and he would have been the last man to depreciate the valuable and even essential aid which was rendered by Read and Russell, Switzler and Todd, not to mention others no less zealous.

There yet remained much, however, to be done before the reconstruction of the University could be considered accomplished and its continued existence assured. It has been said that, when Americans wish to build a monument, the first thing they do is to appoint a committee to collect the money, and the second is to inquire what became of the money that the committee collected. Mr. Rollins, however, was equally solicitous to gather up funds for the University and to provide safeguards against their dispersion. Accordingly he framed, introduced, and urged to final passage a bill, approved February 9, 1870, for the safe investment of the old Seminary fund of $122,000 at six per centum per annum, a bill which, with the far more comprehensive one of 1883, his keen financial sense reckoned as among the most important ever framed in the interest of the University; and now in the Twenty-sixth General Assembly, through whose session his Senatorship of four years extended, he brought forward and successfully advocated an act approved March 29, 1872, which directed the Governor to cause to be issued one hundred and sixty-six coupon bonds of one thousand dollars each, payable in twenty years from July 1, 1872, with interest at five per centum per annum. Of this issue, $35,000 went to the School of Mines at Rolla,