REMOVAL OF THE NORMAL COLLEGE AGITATED.

The legislature had disappointed the expectations of the friends of the Normal College by refusing to make an appropriation for its sup port. The college was growing rapidly and demanded larger revenues, more room, and ampler facilities. The Montgomery Bell Academy was not a success as a model school, and the relations with it were therefore dissolved. But it still occupied a part of the buildings and premises, and could not be dispossessed, for by contract its professors were enti tled to the use of their present quarters until September, 1882. Further more, with the dissolution of the connection between the academy and the college the whole of the Montgomery Bell revenues passed under the control of the Montgomery Bell faculty and the college derived no benefit from them. To meet this falling off in receipts the Peabody trustees increased their annual appropriation to $9,000.

This condition of things was disappointing to the hopes and plans of the Peabody board and the removal of the Normal College began to be mooted. Negotiations were opened between Dr. Sears, general agent of the Peabody fund, and Gustavus J. Orr, State school commissioner of Georgia, in November, 1878. In October, 1879, the Georgia legislature passed a bill creating the "Georgia State Normal College" and appropri ating $6,000 annually to its support, provided the Peabody board would do the same. Atlanta and other towns made liberal offers to secure the location of the college. There were, however, grave objections attaching to the conditions of Georgia's offer. But despite these an agree ment was reached for the transfer of the Peabody interests to Georgia. All that remained was the consent of Dr. Stearns, to whom, as the man who had successfully organized and set going the Normal College, was left the ultimate decision. Dr. Stearns could not divest himself of the idea that Nashville was the place for the college, and that if the people could only be made to open their eyes they would not permit it to be removed. But he found it hard to open their eyes. At last he suc ceeded. A meeting of citizens subscribed and pledged $4,000 annually until the subscribers should be relieved by the legislature, and the trustees of the University of Nashville formally engaged themselves April 21, 1880, on condition that the Normal College remained in Nashville, to remove the Montgomery Bell Academy from the university buildings by October 1, 1880, and to turn them over to the college, to raise by mortgage or otherwise $10,000 for making improvements and purchasing apparatus, and to appropriate to the college the interest on the university endowment of $50,000 Tennessee bonds, reserving enough to pay the interest on the $10,000 to be borrowed and to keep the grounds and buildings in repair.

These pledges of the citizens of Nashville and the university trustees were satisfactory to Dr. Sears. Some delay in carrying them out was occasioned by the death of Dr. Sears in July, 1880. The trustees feared that the Peabody board might not sanction the action of its