Bristol News

GEN. PRESTON'S ADDRESS.
An ornate writer in the Lynchburg Republican, in speaking of the closing exercises of Preston and Olin Institute at Blacksburg, says:
"These exercises are now emphatically closing ones, for by the action of its masters the star of the Preston & Olin set in the now refulgent splendor of the new constellation that shall take its place, the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College. And worthy did the rays of the dying star of our Virginia educational heaven foreshadow the light of the grandest orb to come! The assembling at Blacksburg of the elite of the Southwest in itself showed the deep hold the Preston & Olin has upon the hearts of the people of that section. Named after Wm. Ballard Preston, that tower of the bygone strength of the State that first among the courtiers of our Royal Virginia, and after that grand disciple of Wesley, Dr. Olin, the Preston and Olin ever enjoyed the fostering care of Southwestern Virginia's first citizens, and the sanctum of the grand old pioneer church.
The closing oration proper by Gen. John S. Preston was one difficult to analyze, for that master of the divine art of oratory seized so wholly our hearts and minds that criticism dropped its pen and only lived in the pen sketches of a heartfelt admiration, of an humble acknowledgement of intellectual powers that like polar glaciers cannot be measured - cannot be reached by man. Yet in memory, listening to the deep patriotism, the profound arguments, the soft and gentle appeals, the cutting but Damascean polished sarcasms of the great orator's speech, we can but bow in admiration and trace the proud history of former times to the efforts of such intellects, to the lives of such men."