A number of the members of this class died in early manhood. Coming down to my own class (1844). This class in the Freshman year numbered thirty-three. Of these only nine took degrees. Four others came in after the opening year, making total graduates thirteen. John Lyon, of Petersburg, was the first-honor man of this class. He entered the class in the junior year, when he was in his sixteenth year. Before his entrance there were several candidates for the first honor. It was not long before their hopes began to fail. He was precocious, but his precocity was not short-lived, as it so frequently is. Mathematics, the great rock on which so many aspiring men were wrecked, was apparently a pastime with him. President Garland, a natural-born mathematician, had no mercy on men not like gifted with himself. His course was beyond the power of nine out of ten. John Lyon was the one of ten, and was head and shoulders above all the others in the class in this course, while not equal to others in other courses, but high in all. His brilliancy made him in after life a successful lawyer. He died in Washington, November, 1897, aged seventy. The second-honor man was William C. Doub, of North Carolina. He was an untiring student, gifted especially in the acquisition of language. He was a teacher all his life, having spent the most of it as professor in Trinity College, North Carolina, and Greensboro Female College. He was very prominent in the Methodist Church. He died in the high noon of life. The third-honor man, William M. Cabell, of Virginia, was a man of clear-cut intellect, and he had the power of concentration in a high degree. This power was shown in his early life, and afterwards made him distinguished and feared at the bar and in the Virginia Legislature. He is still living (1897).