CHAPTER THREE
 THE YOUNG EDUCATOR AT TALLAHASSEE

 "Do your work-not just your work and no more, but a little
more for the lavishing's sake; that little more which is worth all
the rest. And if you suffer as you must, and if you doubt as you
must, do your work. Put your heart into it and the sky will clear.
Then out of your very doubt and suffering will be born the su-
preme joy of life."
 --DuEAN BICS.


o Albert Alexander Murphree came over from Texas
to Tallahassee to teach mathematics in the Semi-


 nary West of the Suwannee River.
 fate was leading him to what was
work, and to the state in which that work was
In Tallahassee he was to find an avenue for sc
way, and was to resound to the challenge in
made him president of the College, later presid
versity of Florida, and a leading educator of h
 It was a tall, thin, convalescent young ma
Tallahassee at the beginning of the term of
fever had left its imprint on him. He had a tr
tie to fight, that of regaining his health, as he


 The hand of
 to be his life
to be wrought.
service in a big
a manner that
ent of the Uni-
is generation.
n who reached
1895-96. The
*emendous bat-
made a place


for himself as a leader on the faculty of the college.
 "He was a real mathematician, and he knew how 1
his subject," recounted one of his former students,
successful business man in Florida. "I remember


would come to the board and review my world
critical eye.
 'H'm, so that's the problem!' he would
part of it is wrong. and that part of it.
time he was through I would find most of it
times. But Prof. Murphree would show the
he got through."
 Colonel John A. Henderson, outstanding


o teach
now a
how he


k with a grim and

say. 'Well, that
 and by the
was wrong, some-
right way before

; lawyer, railroad


counsel, prominent citizen, a natural leader of men, was a
trustee of the College back in those days. Colonel Hender-
 25


m.