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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 50

Alumni Reunion

Alumni Reunion.

In the progress of events, and in obedience to the voice of the people, the Missouri University has been established upon a broader and firmer basis than ever before, and is fast coming up to the full idea of an American University. Her every department now bristles with life and living science. She now furnishes, through her academic and associated professional schools, the kinds of education which correspond at once to the spirit of our Republic and the wants of the people at large. These merits of our University were shown, and her aims and wants made known to the 32d General Assembly, and that able body responded with an enlightened liberality, an open-handed generosity at once encouraging and phenomenal. The members, in largely controlling numbers, rising above all adverse prejudices and distracting partisan influences, vied with each other in helping the University on her prosperous way.

The productive endowment funds of the University—including the Agricultural College—have, within the last two years, by the sale of Agricultural College lands, been more than doubled, and now amount to nearly five hundred thousand dollars. Four-fifths of the whole of this productive endowment fund is from the United States. The whole property of the University may be set down at nearly one mil- page 147 lion dollars, of which the plant or campus and buildings (enlarged as provided for by the 32d General Assembly), the farm of over six hundred acres and its improvements, may be put at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and the unsold lauds at two hundred thousand dollars.

Here are indications of a growth most vigorous and healthy. A broad and firm foundation is laid, and a good beginning is made. The perpetuity of the University is guaranteed; and the kind of a University that the State desires and will have, is settled; and the great concern at the present time is to provide for the continued growth of the University and to avert the calamity of an arrest of her development. So that now the only question is how long shall we be in building up our Alma Mater till she becomes to this great empire State of the Mississippi valley what Ann Arbor is to Michigan, or Virginia University to the Old Dominion? and the answer to this question depends largely upon the united exertions of the Alumni. We Alumni now number 1000, dispersed throughout the West. Almost every county in Missouri has in it one or more representatives. And these graduates, from their influence and positions, are the moulders of public thought on higher education—yes, gentlemen, to-day you have to a large extent the future of this University in your own hands.

We are aware that heretofore the Alumni, upon going out into the world, have too often maintained a masterly inactivity and profound silence in regard to the University. Now let us arouse from our lethargy, and co-operate. Go-operation is the charm-word—United we are strong. Graduates of the University! Come one, come all, to the reunion of the Alumni, June 6th, 1883. Come on, a thousand Strong, meet your old class-mates and friends of college days, renew your fealty to your Alma Mater, inform yourselves thoroughly as to what the University Is, and what she should be. Then, upon your return home, keep before the people the merits, the aims and the wants of your Alma Mater, and you will soon see her still more deeply rooted in the confidence and affections of the people, swept along on the wave of a swelling population and growing wealth, till her sun is full high in the heavens—till she be indeed the great throbbing heart of our State educational system, sending the life-blood of learning, virtue and patriotism coursing through all its arteries and veins—till she becomes the pride and the glory of the Mississippi Valley.