“There has not lived another man in this portion of the State in the last forty years,” declared the Sparta _Expositor_, “whose influence has been more widespread and powerful for good than was his. Earnest, honest, modest, clean, wholesome, highminded, honorable, tireless, and unceasing in the discharge of his duty, a well grounded scholar, a wise counsellor and true friend, he has inspired thousands of young men and women to lead the life that is worth while.” The last three presidents of Burritt College were W. S. Graves, serving twice, H. B. Walker, and H. E. Scott. For several years the College continued to prosper. President Billingsley bequeathed the most of his estate as an endowment for the benefit of Burritt College and the Church of Christ in Spencer and for the preaching of the Gospel in backward communities. A new dormitory, called Billingsley Hall, was erected and also a gymnasium. But certain developments in education began to make it difficult for Burritt to make progress. The first was the establishment of county high schools throughout the State, with free tuition, which took away a large number of students from the Preparatory Department of the College. The second adverse development was the increase in the facilities of the University of Tennessee and the establishment of State Normal Schools and other state schools on the college level. Burritt could not successfully compete with such institutions in which tuition was free. As a private school Burritt could have survived only with a large endowment, and that was not to be secured. No Vanderbilt, Duke, or Peabody came to the rescue of Burritt. The scientific age, then far advanced, and the growing emphasis on athletics demanded laboratory equipment and gymnasiums and fieldhouses which cost much money. The old claim that a log with Mark Hopkins sitting on one end with a student on the other constituted a college was long out of date. Under such conditions it was only a question of time until Burritt ceased to function in the form in which it had had a remarkable influence for good for nearly one hundred years. We have all watched the deterioration, decay, and death of our beloved institution with painful forebodings but without power to help. God grant that the College is not actually dead but only sleeping, and that we may hear soon of its awaking to a new life as fruitful of good as it was in the past. Joseph Conrad declared, “The dead can live only with the exact intensity and quality of the life imparted to them by the living.” The truth of this, as applied to man, is open to serious doubt, but it is applicable to institutions like Burritt. Our College can never really die as long as there are those who love it and who live by the high intellectual, moral, and religious principles learned within its walls. Burritt College lives in the influence still alive in the hearts and minds, and spirits of its alumni scattered far and wide.