Mr. Branson has had large and varied experience in school work. He is an incessant and tireless worker, and while performing his duties as teacher, superintendent, professor, and president, he has found time to do much Summer institute and campaign work and to write and edit a number of valuable textbooks. Among these may be named, "Methods of Teaching Reading and Spelling;" "Methods in Arithmetic;" "Branson's Common School Spellers." He edited "Johnson's Readers;" revised "Page's Theory and Practice of Teaching;" "Georgia Edition Arnold's Waymarks for Teachers;" and "Georgia Edition Shaw's School Hygiene."

Mr. Branson's quick intelligence, tender sympathy for children and his love for the common people, his unflagging zeal and indomitable energy have given him a rare understanding of the most essential features of the great problem of education and made him a leader in Georgia and the South.

Mr. Branson's greatest opportunity came to him when he was elected President of the State Normal School of Georgia, located at Athens, and organized as part of the University of Georgia. Instead of trying to make the school a college, to duplicate the academic work done in many colleges of the State, his efforts are to make it a real normal school, in which the common-school teachers of the State may get such education as will enable them to do the work so much needed in the country districts, villages, and small towns. He is teaching these coming teachers in such a way as will help them to be most helpful to the pupils they must have, in the homes and the conditions that await them.

Mr. Branson believes that Southern civilization will need to be built around the school-house, and that we shall need to start clear, if possible, of the mistakes of other sections of the country. "If we can gradually set up in every farm community a wellordered school, where ordinary academic instruction is intelligently given, and where at the same time some of the long hours

of the school day are given to such forms of handicraft as can easily be transferred to the homes of the community and become a source of occupation and income; and if, in addition, nature studies, school libraries, mothers' clubs, and village industries of all sorts come into existence, then we shall have a different kind of country village in the South. The future of our country," he says, "must be built upon a fundamental belief in the home and the school, as primary agencies in national progress, national sanity, and national greatness."

To young people who may read this biography Mr. Branson would commend, "Loving acquaintance with the Bible; rigid self-discipline in logical analysis of some great book, as, for instance, Calhoun's Disquisition on Government; the habit of literary interpretation of great masterpieces, and personal contact with noble workers in the world's service."

Since 1900. there has been secured by the management of the State Normal the sum of $118,000 for buildings, apparatus and equipment, from the generous friends of the institution, outside of State appropriations. At present the school is perhaps the best equipped of its kind in the South, although less than $15,000 have been spent for equipment out of the State treasury. During this period the course of study has been doubled, the faculty has been trebled, and the stability of the student body multiplied twelve-fold, growing from six per cent in 1900 to seventy-five per cent in 1904. Within the last two years two new buildings have been erected at a total cost of $42,000, only $6,000 of which was appropriated by the State. Two other new buildings now under way will cost $50,000, half coming from the State treasury and half from outside donations. The Daughters of the Confederacy have erected an everlasting memorial in the Winnie Davis Memorial Hall, which they have also furnished. The Woman's Press Club, various woman's clubs and numerous chapters of the Daughters of the Confeder

acy have been induced by the present management to maintain a number of scholarships at the State Normal, thus making it possible for an increased number of teachers to better fit themselves for their life work.

Mr. Branson was married to Miss Lottie Lanier, West Point, Ga., Sept. 27, 1888. They have had four children, all of whom are living. W. J. NORTHEN.