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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 1, 1900)
THE BATTALION. 19 nnpropitious circumstances and with such ill-assorted material succeeded in bringing order out of chaos and in establishing at least a good literary school, will always redound to their credit and will secure them the grati tude of all who value this institution. When Christmas had come and passed it seemed as if every one of our little band had brought back with him a friend from his boyhood home. When the spring term opened 130 students had been enrolled, two companies were formed and mess hall had to serve as a domitory once more. On the first day of the second session at least 250 young men came here for matricula tion, a battalion of four companies was organized and while wooden bar racks were put up in hot haste, we were left, if not “three in a bed.” at least sadly cramped for room. This phenomenal increase in attendance could not have been due to the hand some gray uniforms and Texas but tons, that we had paraded over the State in vacation, but to the apprecia tion of the fad that a great institution of learning had arisen in the land. When you think of the college as we saw it today, of its many stately and attractive buildings, its machine shops, its dairy, its natatorium. its library and its physical and chemical labora tories, its score of teachers, all care fully trained for their special line of work, when you view the campus beautified by all the arts of the land scape gardener, where countless birds build their nests and chant their morn ing carols, and then compare it with the brown and somber plain that we saw twenty-three years ago, with a mere ‘corporal's guard of students wearily exploring the mysteries “fours rights” and “right wheel,” per haps at the very spot where Assembly Hall shelters you to-day, you may find it difficult to link the two together and call them one. But with those, who knew the col lege thep and loved it, it is different. While we may rejoice in the changes that have been accomplished, stronger by far than the sensation of contrast, arises that of versimilitude. When you meet a aueenly woman and ad mire her charms, you may find it hard to realize that in days gone by she was a freckle-faced harum-scarum little girl who liked to throw dig nity to the winds and could out- romp the wildest of the boys: but those who knew her then, and loved her, will still discover in her face and voice and bearing traces of her former self which neither time nor boarding school nor the responsibili ties of life could efface. Not only the “Main Building,” the “Old Mess Hall” and a few houses “down the line” are left to remind us of the past, but living men tell us. louder than works of brick and mor tar, that the “Old College” has not en tirely passed away. As I go out among your students, it is not only by similar caps and buttons, nor by some strangely familiar phrases of “college slang” that have stood the test of time, nor by the same fondness for ice cream and the command of “break ranks” I recognize that they are now, what we have been—our younger brothers, I see among them the same esprit du corps, the same good fel lowship, the same manly bearing, the same impulsive contempt for coward ice, or cant, that were distinctive of their predecessors. I see all these and I know r without the asking, that they would answer a call to rise to the