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Col. E.W. Mason
Supt. of Education for La.

[[stamp]] THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE UNITED STATES [[/stamp]]

Your Committee appointed Dec 28th 1869 to examine contract and specifications made by you in behalf of the United States Government, with Mr. John Page, for the building of Straight University, and to report at the completion of the building whether the specifications have been fulfilled, beg leave to submit the following.

This late date we cannot pronounce said building complete in any sense, all the gallery and porch floors and the exposed stairways and front platform being still unpainted. In the work nominally complete we find the following two defective to be approved or passed over. Wainscoting to the extent of 2910 square feet which the contract distinctly states shall be beaded, and which its tone and the law of custom requires placed perpendicular we find plain and running horizontally.

Ceiling under the galleries and stairways and over the porch or front entrance measuring some 2540 square feet we find exceedingly plain or common while the contract requires it done with "narrow tongued grooved and beaded ceiling boards."

The Privies scarcely meet the specifications in any particular and we think they will serve a good purpose but a short time as they are