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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 1898)
14 THE BATTALION. these cadets. For eight j^ears back, I think no ofiicial of the campus has lelt secure in conscience until he unloaded a large share of his plans upon the administrative shoulders of the “Governor,” as we all called him. Indeed, as executive, he invited such confidence, and no man can say he ever abused it. Unobtrusive as an inspector, open to counsel at all times with a finely discriminating judgment, an exalted idea of justice, the firmness of a rock when his mind had been made up, he intertwined our burdens with his own, raised us to his level of enthusiasm, imbued us with his own friendly inter est in the welfare of these cadets,—isn’t it educating to work with such a man? It I were asked to name the characteristic which proba bly beyond all others conditioned President Boss’ influence as a man, from a practical and, therefore, educational point of view, I should point to his conservatism. Without being in any sense a strickler for old usages because they were old, or because of any lack of capacity to grapple with progressive aims, he was eminently an upholder of tried, tetted meas ures, as opposed to all projects which have their raison d’etre in the cobwebby imagination of the theorist, or the sel fish motives of the trickster. It was in this moderation of conservatism, combined with a firmness that knew no yield ing when once his judgment was convinced, that he won the confidence of the people, the respect of political opponents, and in the strength of this noble, manly trait, he could have led these young men, most expert judges, by the way, of character—to the cannon’s mouth. He did lead them, he led us all,‘unobtrusively but with a strong hand, to better im pulses and firmer resolutions for the right, the manly, the christain. These qualities were in him the outcome of intellectual culture, not showy but solid, and above all of a sincere rev erence for Christianity as a life-influence and the bible as its
