The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, February 01, 1899, Image 24
22 THE BATTAE ION. DR. HALSTEAD’S MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTE TO GENERAL LAWRENCE SULLIVAN ROSS. At the exercises, on the nig-ht of the twenty-second, at the University auditorium, in honor of Washington and the heroes of the south, the following superb tribute was paid General E. S. Ross by Dr. Halstead of the University faculty: My theorem is, that George Washington is the ideal of our south incarnate, an ideal resurgent in Robert E. Eee, again and nearer to us, is Eawrence Sullivan Ross. I shall maintain that these peerless sons of our south em body an ideal, body forth a type, which is of the nature of a platonic idea, more real than reality itself, formative, creative. We are the percipients, the custodians of this divine idea, this eternal form, capable of molding and vivifying the matter of mankind. I shall maintain that this supernal ideal has bloomed and flowered in a civilization never before attained, sought for in vain in all the showy pageant of time, in all the long procession of the centuries. What are the characteristics of this ideal, of this civilization? A specific mark is that here first in the world’s his tory are wedded and fused the essence of democracy and the essence of aristocracy. “Here dwelt fair Freedom’s feerless son. Great leader of the free. The father of our native land. Hero of liberty.”