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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 1, 1897)
x'HE BATTALION. 19 Visions come and go— Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng, From angel lips I seem to hear the flow Of soft and holy song. It is nothing now, When heaven is open on my sightless eyes, When airs from Paradise refresh my brow, That earth in darkness lies. In purer clime My being fills of rapture—waves of thought Roll in upon my spirit—strains sublime Break over me unsought. Give me now my lyre! I feel the stirrings of a gift divine; Within my bosom grows unearthly fire Lit by no skill of mine. ^ctclress. Mr. President, members of the Austin Literary Society, Ladies and Gentlemen: I take it, that this Society is organ ized for the purpose of waging a war, offensive and defensive against ignorance, and that every member has enlisted for the war, and not for the purpose of a little recreation, a little dress-parade, a little martial music, and when the real war is on, retire to the rear or withdraw from the contest. There fore, bear with me,while I attempt to discuss the great enemy of ignorance, consider his power, and wherefore, in the hypo thetical battle royal, he ought to succeed. That enemy is knowledge. It has become a byword., that ‘‘wealth is power," and in an ignominious sense it is. “Knowledge is power,” in a higher and true sense. A street car mule, marked and scarred by the merciless lash, in the hands of a merciless driver, possesses more physical power, to move a load, than the possessor of the giant intellect, which discovered the laws that control the material universe, and measured, and weigh ed, the mighty orbs that whirl in matchless grandeur through infinite space.