Vying in sunshine and moonshine with the Capitol in conspicuous aspect, the two stand as twin sentinels on opposite ramparts of the Potomac Valley, overlooking in midnight vigil the slumbering city, each challenging the attention of the wayfarer. What art thou to justify thyself to man? What mission hast thou to excuse thy being? What road of profit? What principle of uplift hast thou to send forth? Thy halls resound to the murmur of what message from the Divine? What, we ask, is thy mission? The answer is echoed from the archives: "Consult her founders; learn of them if thou wouldst know." Therefore, friends, we turn to the records of Howard University and the declaration of her founders--her founders, men fresh from the fortunes of war, battle-scarred and blood-stained, desiring further to perpetuate the object of their militant victories by the forces of peace and brotherhood; men who failed to die at Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, and Lookout Mountain, and continued the fight on this hill; men who, not satisfied with loosening the shackles of bondage, turned their powers to driving darkness from human souls, though encased in ebony; men who wrought under God's hand, and dying dissatisfied that the full fruition of their labors were not yet come to pass, leaving to survivors and posterity an unmistaken task and warfare. Howard has had two seals. The first reading "Equal rights and knowledge for all"; the second, "For God and the Republic"; the former breathing the spirit of the Civil War period and the Pauline doctrine declared before the Areopagus, announced in the preaching and work of Christ and emphasized by the Declaration of Independence; the latter pregnant with reverence, piety, and patriotism; the twain compassing man's duty higher than which human conception is lost. Privileged indeed is one to live under the aegis of such twin declarations. Fortunate indeed to have the authorization of official acts blessed by the benediction of such battle-cries. The preamble to the charter explains comprehensively, though not in detail, the great purpose of Howard University: "Section 1. That there be established, and is hereby established in the District of Columbia, a university for the education of youth in the liberal arts and sciences, under the name, seal, and title of Howard University," stated as simple and plain as the decalogue itself. I glean from the Fourth Annual Report on Schools for Freedmen for July 1, 1867, by J. W. Alvord, then General Superintendent of Schools, Bureau for Refugees and Abandoned Lands, what I conceive to be the first catalogue of Howard University, and, if you will bear with me, I will read the entire catalogue.