18
THE BATTALION.
science you can digest, drilling you into stiff-jointed European
soldiery; on the contrary, the theory of the processes through
which you are going is this: The training, and discipline, and
mental drawing-out which have made successful, and useful,
and righteous American statesmen, professional men, artists,
artisans, and farmers in the past will make them again. This
is no experiment; the process has the approbation of ages, and
it has been stripped for you, young men, if you only knew it,
of many a foolishness and hardship of school-life which would
be to you just sources of complaint. College life gives you
not a single qualification which you have not brought with you.
It strengthens, wudens, enlargens, in some cases—it is to be
hoped—prunes tendencies and capacities which are yours by
nature; in a word it is an evolutionary process rather than a
probation. It is not to make something out of you, it is to
develop all that is in you that is healthy and vigorous and
righteous. This is no employment office in which clerks, book
keepers, teachers, etc., are made to order, it is, I believe, in
the conception of its reasonable patrons, its directory, its presi
dent and his colleagues, an arena on which manhood is ma
tured, the very manhood which is to be carried with one
through life, the manhood which will make you a wise, con
servative, conscientious lawyer, doctor, statesman, teacher,
or what not, or on the contrary, a pettifogging, time-serving,
aspirant for cheap notoriety and money.
o
The Alpha Phi Fraternity.
BY A. B. BANKS.
This body has for its purpose, the up building of the Agricul
tural and Mechanical college of Texas, the cultivation of ac
quaintance and friendship among the ex-cadets, and the ad
vancement of the individual interests of the members of the
fraternity.
Texas now has one of the best equipped agricultural and
mechanical colleges in the United States and should have the
largest patronage. The development of so vast and diversified
a territory as our state has creates an increasing demand for
men especially trained in scientific agriculture and the me-