14
THE BATTALION.
these cadets. For eight j^ears back, I think no ofiicial of the
campus has telt 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