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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 1897)
6 THE BATTALION. time. To some minds it implies too much, to others too little and all difler as to the details of the process. ( Let me tell you in plain terms the purpose for which you enrolled your names on those matriculation books. You each one brought here with you something to be trained, something which distinguished you when at home from your brothers and sisters, something by which you are remem bered now among your companions and the people of the neighborhood or town from which you came, something by which these fellow cadets of yours will know and distinguish you before your name becomes familiar to them. Young men, just as the farmer brings his iron rod to yonder forge and has the smith to hammer it into a hoe or plow share, just as he brings his fine timber to the cabinet maker and has it. fashioned into a box, just as the miner brings his gold and silver to the mint and has it stamped into current coin, or to the gold smith to have it formed into a bracelet or ring, so you have brought us here a piece of personal property, more or less crude, which we will call character, personal cha - acter, to have it tested, analysized, purified, tempered, train ed, developed, so thut men will know you by it and recog nize it or repudiate and discount it all through life as the re presentative of what you are and what you are worth. I know no other reason under the sun than this why you are here, and my experience recognizes no other defination of education.) What, I came here as a student, you say, to have my character tested! Yes. I assert it, and I think those men, my colleagues, will bear me out, and, by your character or personality, I mean, your inborn capacity to become a man and do a true man’s duty and lead a manly life. If you have never thought of it in this light, it is time to do so. Our laboratories and lecture rooms and corps organization and campus drill and barrack life, even this lectureship to which you are called once a week, are calculated and arranged, as may be, to meet the necessities of your case.