THE BATTALION.
1?
means growth. In the first place, it is a virgin soil—not in the
sense of purity and innocence, but because age has not worn out
its fertility. You come among us with unlimited x^ossibilities;
comparatively little preparation, because of your youth, and
having in your natures the germs of all sorts of growth, the
unoccupied ground for receiving many more.
Your natures are like a piece of newly cleared garden soil,
picketed in, it is true, from the incursions of fiercer enemies,
but with cracks looking out in all directions, a sub-soil which
connects you with the outside, a sky above you open to the
droppings of every strange bird, with an atmosphere of breezes,
and falling showers, misty with all sorts of seeds, sometimes
with killing frosts. It is not the college policy to build a solid
wall around you and cover you over as Mr. Eberspacher does
his hot house plants, or to put calculated restrictions about
you as the experiment station does its beds. You have just as
much liberty as I have, or as your president has, only, being
young still, it is thought you may forget things, and they are
written out for your guidance. It is no more my privilege to
wander about, at night, or make unseemly noises, or injure
college property, or gamble, or drink, or show disrespect to
you or the officers than it is yours. I have a copy of your
regulations in my keeping; I know no single one to which I
am not directly or indirectly in relationiship to college amen
able. This morning’s service is no more compulsory for you
than it is for me, or for those ladies, or for the members of the
faculty. I would be ashamed to learn that any of you study
more or harder than we, your instructors do. The laws of the
college about you are just like palings or props set to young
sprouts which are inclined to bend with every breeze; their
penalties are efforts to reach your reason, and give you that
experience which the world outside would force upon you
with many a kick and blow, and bruise and heartless thrust.
In the absence of parents, your natural guides, and in view
of your numbers, such artificial means of restraint and induce
ments to do healthy work have to be resorted to.
But, the soil of college life is not an experimental one. The
object is not to make a bulletin by testing what sort of a new
creature can be made out of you by stuffing you with a certain
proportion of mathematical food, feeding you on all the natural