On account of failure to record the financial statement of 1886, the exact amount of net assets of the College cannot here be given. The retiring President served nine years, almost identically the same period served by his predecessor, Dr. Duncan. His administration was also, like Dr. Duncan's, marked by great financial embarrassment, which had a depressing influence on a sensitive temperament like his was. That his days were shortened by the constant burden of care, like his predecessor's, can hardly be doubted. Both of them were, in a sense, martyrs to the cause of Christian education. Dr. Bennett never regained his health. He moved to his farm, in Louisa county, and took work on the contiguous appointment at the Conference of 1886. While engaged in the work of his charge he gradually declined in health, and died June 7, 1887. REV. W. W. BENNETT, D. D. "WILLIAM WALLACE BENNETT, son of Eli and Mary C. Bennett, was born in the city of Richmond, February 24, 1821. He was reared under the fostering care and social surroundings of Methodism, and was the subject of religious impressions from an early period. "In 1839, under the ministry of Rev. Gervas M. Keesee, he made a profession of religion, and united with the Methodist Episcopal Church in Portsmouth. Here, with the help of class-meetings and other social, as well as the public means of grace, his religious experience had a healthful beginning, that developed the elevated character and useful life that our beloved brother has bequeathed to the church. Soon after his conversion, he, and several others who were exercised about a call to the ministry, met and conversed upon the subject, and prayed for divine guidance, giving evidence that when he entered the itinerancy it was no rash adventure. In the fall of 1841, he removed to Mecklenburg county, where his brother, Rev. John R. Bennett, was in charge of the circuit. There he pursued his studies, obtained license to preach, and began his ministry, passing through what he conceived to be the crucial test of his call to preach. Discouraged, as he informed the writer, by what he conceived to be a failure in the pulpit before a large congregation, he was tempted to give up the ministry; but falling in the hands of an experienced and godly class-leader, who encouraged him by his counsel and his prayers, he returned to his work with renewed consecration, and a conviction too strong to be jostled again.