TILLOTSON COLLEGE, TEXAS

TILLOTSON is far away" is the introduction to an excerpt taken from an issue of "The American Missionary" of some time ago. To those of us who are on the ground, Tillotson seems "very near," and with its beautiful location, its fine working equipment we see no reason why the "far away" should not be supplemented with "far ahead."

Located on one and perhaps the best of its many hills, occupying a campus of twenty acres upon which over one hundred and fifty varieties of wild flowers bloom, ranging from the famed blue-bonnet and the white rain-lily to the yellow coreopsis and the pink blossomed cactus, it is a veritable garden for the fairies. Early in the fall when the vegetation has been burned brown by the fierce summer heat, the rain-lilies suddenly spring forth after a night of rain, dotting the whole lower part of the campus with their white blossoms. But the beautiful sight comes in the spring when solid quarter-acre beds of the "blue-bonnets," relieved by the green of the grass and off-set by the pink flowered morning glory as they grow side by each, cover the entire campus with a blue carpet.

These are followed in rapid succession by the cerise colored mallow, the wine-colored holyhock, the purple mint, the white thistle poppy, and a hundred others. These flowers are not only bright in hue but luxuriant in growth, until what has been one month a blue landscape has been changed to one of pure white, and in these closing days of the school year the white and the blue have given place to the yellow of thousands of coreopsis. To those unacquainted with the flora of Texas, it ia a wonderful sight and places Tillotson among those schools which are "beautiful for situation."

There are five buildings on the campus, two of which are dormitories, Allen Hall for the boys and Beard Hall, containing also the dining room, for the girls. The Administration Building, containing the administrative offices and the recitation rooms, and the Evans Industrial Building for manual training are of recent construction, both fine structures and fully equipped for modern school work. The industrial building is especially well fitted up for manual training with its machine room, its forge room, its woodworking department, its printing shop, and its drafting room. With such an equipment, there should be at least five hundred students taking their work at Tillotson.

At Allen Hall, the boys' dormitory, through the cooperation of two of the teachers and of several of the boys who offered to paper and paint their own rooms if we would repair the plaster, we have seven or eight rooms put in good shape this year.

The dormitory halls and many of the rooms are sadly in need of repair. Our students will return and bring with them other students if we will make conditions livable. The girls in Beard Hall have been made comfortable, and there will be no complaint from that quarter, and we want to do as well by the boys this next year if the means can be forthcoming.

But our minds have not dwelt on the buildings all of the year to the exclusion of other things. We have put into force an effective commercial department, or rather continued the effectiveness of this department, the students from which have actual business practice in the offices of the college.

Our domestic science department has its practice work in the kitchen connected with the college preparing the meals for the dining room.

But perhaps our most effective work has been in relation to our teacher training. Hitherto we have offered a course in Education and Pedagogy without any practice training in the application of the p rinciples learned in these courses in order to remedy this defect a m odel rural school has been opened. T his Model School is to be as near as possible the rural school with its  particular problems that the av erage young teacher has to teach her first position. Here each twelfth grade girl taking the teaching training course spends five periods a day for two months. She is given th e responsibility for certain subjects and their treatment. She ha ndles the disciplinary troubles and in every school room Her wo rk is supervised and corrected. 

Every opportunity is given to develop her own ideas with her pupils, Everything possible is done to bring out the teacher in her and train her the way she should go. The girls who have thus far this year worked in the school have by the experience gained more than justified its existence. In addition to the practical work in the school room the teacher training class has one period a day of rural school methods and one period a day of psychology. We hope to graduate as a result of this training teachers better fitted to meet and cope with school problems.