THE BATTALION.
IT
Is nothing more truly of Texas, and
nearer to the hearts of all patriotic
Texans, than the Texas State Univer
sity and her Agricultural and Mechani
cal College.
The one, a noble seat of learning, al
ready great and destined to place the
Texas flag wherever learning erects her
monument. The other, while receiving
aid from a donation made by the Fed
eral Government, still obtains her chief
support and maintenance from the
State, and is part of her flesh and
blood. It is already one of the great
technical and industrial colleges of the
country. There the sciences kindred
to her purposes are taught with great
proficiency. There are taught the arts
of both war and peace, for Texas with
in her halls trains and makes skillful
her farmers, her mechanics and her sol
diers; thus linking, with scientific skill
and literary attainment, the independ
ence and dignity of labor and the du
ties of a soldier. An institution that
during the twenty years of her history,
has added to the material advancement
of the State, and has contributed her
sons to science, to the shop, to the
mine, to many manufacturing enter
prises, to the farm, to the field of bat
tle, and, if you please, to the profes
sions.
Speaking for the Alumni, an ex-stu
dent of the Agricultural and Mechanical
College, residing in San Antonio, you
thus must know that we welcome all
from both institutions. We honor both.
Texas needs both, and, in the language
of Commodore Schley, “There is glory
enough for all.”
To that institution, from whose halls
we come, its proficient faculty, its gal
lant corps of cadets, and its ex-students
and alumni, we make fraternal wel
come. While I have pursued another
calling, and it is among the greatest
known to civilization, still may I not
with propriety, in the presence of this
faculty and of this corps of cadets, pur
suing the purposes and aspirations of
that institution, without fulsome flat
tery, pay a tribute to those avocations
the one teaches and the other studies
to become. The farmer, the mechanic,
the soldier. The better learned the bet
ter farmer; the better farmer, the bet
ter citizen, the more scientific the more
successful. All men honor him. He is
the developer of the earth’s resources,
the conservator of the peace, the en
forcer of the law, the dispenser of true
hospitality, the friend of religion and
the enemy of corruption and tyranny.
He is a soldier when needed, as the
whole of the British Empire can testify
at this time, and has learned before.
He has no master and owes no alle
giance, except to his country and his
God.
The mechanic. To my mind, there is
no profession or avocation requiring a
higher order of intellect, more accurate
training of stricter integrity than that
of the mechanic. His science is an ex
act one. His art is order. Mistakes
cannot be made, and dishonesty prac
ticed and his work survive. A lawyer
may be inaccurate and still win, a phy
sician may be. in error and the patient
still recover, but let a mechanic make
an error, and failure will mark his
efforts. Let him fail to understand the
machinery he operates, and disaster will
be the result. The work of his hand is
immortal, and out of the misty and
hoary past arises sublime structures,
monuments to his skill, industry and
integrity, still existing when kingdoms
have crumbled and kings and nations
have been forgotten. He marks both
the land and the sea with his domin-