"REV. AND DEAR SIR: I hereby acknowledge the receipt of your official letter informing me of my election to the professorship of mathematics in Randolph-Macon College. My answer has been delayed until the present that I might have an opportunity of consulting the Virginia Conference, of which I am a member, before replying definitely to your communication. The Conference at its last session having advised me to the acceptance of the professorship tendered, it is hereby accepted. And in accepting it, which I cannot do but with diffidence, in view of the important duties and high responsibilities therewith connected, I beg that you will present to the Board of Trustees my acknowledgements for the favorable light in which they have been pleased to view my qualifications for the department to which I am called. "For the institution now growing under their auspices I cherish the warmest regard, and so far as devotion to its interests can ensure success, I hope not altogether to disappoint the expectations of the Board. More, it is presumed, need not be promised; less could not be required. Offering through you to the Board my most Christian regards, I have the pleasure to subscribe myself, dear sir, "Very respectfully yours, "M. P. PARKS." Dr. John Emory was subsequently elected Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was one of the most honored and beloved Bishops that church ever had. It was soon called to mourn his sudden and untimely death, which occurred while he was in the prime of life and in the height of a most useful career. His name is made honorable by its association with two colleges of the church--Emory College, Oxford, Georgia, founded in 1837, and Emory and Henry College, Virginia, founded 1838. His son, Rev. Robert Emory, was subsequently president of Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, and was most highly esteemed by the church. His name is known and repeated to this day as the christian name of children whose fathers were under his care and tutelage at Dickinson College. At this meeting the Board found the Preparatory School in operation. It had been opened in January, 1832. The first principal, Rev. Lorenzo Lea, A. M., was not able to take charge of it promptly because of a previous engagement at Chapel Hill University, North Carolina. He did commence his work, however, early in the year. His place was temporarily supplied by Mr. Hugh A. Garland, brother of Prof. Landon C. Garland, a graduate of Hampden-Sidney College, who afterwards was clerk of the House of Representatives of the United States, and the author of "The Life of John Randolph, of Roanoke." The Preparatory School had during the first term a patronage of thirty-eight. The Board ordered for this School an assistant teacher.