I beg leave to tender my resignation as Professor in the University, & to ask its immediate acceptance at your hands.

Under ordinary circumstances I would not essay to leave my post without the customary notice, but the times are peculiar & I throw myself upon your generosity for an immediate release.

I have most reluctantly & painfully come to the conclusion that I must leave the University at all. I have steadily refused hitherto all overtures to go elsewhere; but the present condition of the College is so gloomy, & its prosperity in the immediate future so precarious that I do not feel justified in any further effort to weather the storm. Of the ultimate success & the future bright career of the University I have no more doubt than I have of its former extraordinary popularity. But I cannot afford to await the change. If I must leave at all, my poverty utterly precludes the possibility of my giving the required six months notice. If I were to give that notice now, at the end of the time I might, & probably would, find myself without a place & without "visible means of support." Remunerative places are not one to ten to the applicants for them. My only chance then is to provide a new home before I leave the old one. Absolute poverty leaves me no other course, & as it is, I shall be compelled to borrow the money that is to carry me to my new field of labor.

I write by the same mail that carries this to the Trustees of the Columbia (Tenn) High School to say that I will accept their offer, and I hope you will not consider me unreasonable in asking you, under all the circumstances, to grant my dismissal.