In 1860, Mrs. Hollins, now a lonely widow, signalized her profound interest in a new gift of $10,000. This generous and timely act pushed up the contributions of the Hollins family to the handsome sum of $17,500. The growing popularity of Hollins sprung the problem of enlarged facilities and to solve it was the design of this latest benevolence. It was greeted with boundless gratitude, and the Trustees deputed one of their members, Mr. Wm. A. Miller, to bear to her their most cordial thanks. Accompanying this message was an urgent request for the oil portraits of the two benefactors. In due time the portraits came, and to this day they adorn the walls of the Main Building, whose erection was made possible by the recent gift. An architect was employed, and work was begun on this building in the spring of 1861, on the very day that Virginia seceded from the Union. The tempest and blight of the Civil War came down to threaten the life of the Institution and to almost break the heart of the founder. Expectant hope had looked for early occupancy, but it was not to be. In one year the walls were upreared, the roof was on, and then the work stopped. The contractor quit his job because the war had disorganized labor and the situation was simply helpless. There stands the unfinished structure, and there it will stand, a ghastly skeleton for eight long years. At this beginning of horrors, Mr. Cocke's reputation as a strong man was established, and the fair name of his school was extended beyond the limits of the State. Seasoned in old battles and richly schooled in experience, he stands in his place unterrified. He dares, even amid the clouds and disasters of war, to send out his adventurous thought, thirty years to the fore. What ought to be, what may be, the facilities and achievements of this Institution a generation hence? He is now too well fortified in his convictions of educational theory and practice, and of their fitness to the needs of the time, to be affrighted by the spectres and goblins of ultimate failure.