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Nestling closed to the Blue Ridge Mountains
in Franklin County, Pennsylvania,
remarkable for beautiful scenery and made
renowned by such teachers and thinkers as
Nevin, Schaff, Rauch, and Higbee, is Mercersberg
College. Here was at one time the site
of Marshall College, removed a number of
years since to the city of Lancaster. During
the past three years, however, this insitutiion
has been managed as a high-grade academy
for boys, and it is rapidly taking rank among
the best preparatory schools of America. At
the last three Commencements it has graduated
sixty-seven young men, more than fifty
of whom have entered the following colleges
and universities: Harvard, Princeton, Lehigh,
Lafayette, Franklin and Marshall, Ursinus,
and University of Pennsylvania. Two courses
(the English, preparing for technical schools
or business, and the Academic, leading into
college), under a faculty of nine members,
maintain a high grade of scholarship.

Situated in a small community, this school
is unacquainted with the distraction of city
life. The atmosphere is one of moral purity
and manliness, and the Bible finds a regular
place in the cirriculum. On the first Sabbath
of each month, noted preachers come from
abroad to preach to the boys; there are also
given "Monthly Practical Talks: by men eminent
in Business Law, Medicine, Theology,
Teaching and Journalism. The discipline of
the school demands close application and
good behavior. Boys with vicious habit are
dismissed from the institution.

The equipment of the school is modern.
Large, airy, handsomely-furnished room, a
cheap market, a school dairy and vegetable
gardens given comfortable accommodations
and excellent boarding, at very moderate
rates. A number of scholarships, recently
provided, enable boys of limited means, but
who have good ability, to educate themselves
for an exceeding small outlay of money.

The following testimony of Dr. William
M. Sloane. Professor of History in Princeton
University, will give an idea of the quality of
the work done at Mercersburg. Says he:
"Dr. Irvine, Principal of Mercersburg College,
has been a trusted friend for many
years. His school is an admirable institution,
well-planned, well-ordered, and successful in
upbuilding both character and scholarship
among the pupils. those of the boys who
have entered Princeton have done credit to
their training, being manly men and excellent
students."

Mercersburg's ideal boy is the one who is
taught to cultivte and use all of his powers.
Encouragement is given to athletics, with
proper retrictions. Each boy is required to join one
of two literary societies; a faculty member, as
adviser of the societies, helps the boys to learn the
elements of oration and debate. All boys are required
to speak in public at least twice during the school
years. The entire school as one chorus is drilled in
vocal music. Under competent instuctors, the glee,
banjo, and mandolin clubs add a charm to school life.
Essay work and letter writing are required of all, and
two publications, a monthly and an annual, are edited
by the boys of the school who enter into their journalistic
labors with great enthusiasm.

[second column]
[four photographs of Mercersburg College on right side of newspaper article]
[text - second picture MAIN HALL MECERSBURG COLLEGE]
[text - third picture SOUTH COTTAGE]
[text - fourth picture NORTH COTTAGE]

William Mann Irvine, Ph.D., the President and
Head-master of Mercersburg, is a gradutate of Phillips
Exeter Academy, of Princeton University, and of Lancaster,
Pa., Theological School. He has made a
special study of education in the foremost academies
of England. He has also had a wide and varied experience
as an educator of young men, covering a period
of many years, and is thoroughly familar and in sympathy
with boy-life in all its phases. His aim is to
inspire each boy, who is placed under his care, with
the lofty ideals of thorough scholarship, broad attainments
sound judgement and Christian manliness.