THE BATTALION.
7
THE “OLIO."
E. H.
Seven years ago the first “annual”, of
this college was published. Most first-class
colleges in this country issue each year a
volume which collects and holds in perma
nent form such records and pictures of col
lege life as seem worth preserving. Such
a book is valuable to anyone interested in
the college for it should hold class-rolls and
company-rolls, short biographies and like
nesses of the directors and faculty and
other officers, and of the graduating class;
pictures of college life and surroundings;
records of college victories and defeats in
drill, athletics and oratory; pictures and
rolls of all the college organizations; col
lege j-ells and songs, verses and jokes, and
even caricatures are not out of place in it.
Such a volume is sure of its readers when
it is first issued, but it grows more valua
ble with time. When the class of ’95,
through difficulties and hindrances, of which
their own inexperience was, perhaps, the
greatest, got out the first issue of “The
Olio, an Annual Published by the Corps of
Cadets of the Agricultural and Mechanical
College of Texas, ” they had no difficulty
in disposing of the 250 copies they had or
dered printed. The college was not so
large then, nor “college spirit” so strong,
but every cadet wanted an “Olio” to take
home with him, for it was full of pictures
and records that showed what the “A. &
M.” stood for. Now, those men who were
cadets here then, come back for a day or
two, and we hear them say, “Yes, when
ever I go home I get out my old ‘Olio’ and
look it through, and read the names of the
boys in my company and look at the pic
ture of my captain and my room-mate and
old Pfeuffer Hall, and the ‘M. B.,’ and
‘the Governor,’ and ‘Old Bull,’ and
‘Harry,’ and ‘Whitty,’ and ‘Charlie,’
and ‘Jimmy,’ and 'the Doc’ and ‘Grand
pa,’ and all the rest. I wouldn’t take ten
dollars for that book now.”
It was hard work to get out the first
“Olio” for all that was done had to be done
in less than four months. No succeeding
class has undertaken to issue a second one
’til now, the class of ’03, stimulated by the
increased interest in such matters shown
by the marked improvement in the “Bat
talion” this year, has determined to try it
next year, and has already obtained per
mission from the faculty. The members of
the faculty will help us. It is confidently
expected that they will contribute both
literary and pictorial matter to the “Olio,
Vol. II,” as they did so generously to
“Vol. I.”
But the bulk of the work must be ours.
This “Olio” is to be, as the first was, pub
lished by the corps, not by the First Class
alone—though they will naturally take the
lead—but every student, down to the fresh
est “Christmas fish” must feel that the
“Olio” is his, and that if he has a good
photograph of a college scene, a design for
a tail-piece or an initial letter, a verse or a
squib or a “josh,” he can drop it into the
“Olio portfolio,” which should, by next
February, be a treasure-box of college pic-