Here in San Antonio what is the building you are proudest of?—the Alamo. It is not exactly up to date. Other buildings are more useful. But you are proud of it because it commemorates forever the spirit of those who made its fame immortal. So in the State itself, important though it is to provide for the industrial welfare of the commonwealth, the thing that is most important is to take care of the really vital crop—the crop of citizens. The thing which the State most needs to care for is the welfare, not merely material, but moral and intellectual as well, of the children who are going to make up the State fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five years hence; and that is why I am so glad to see the care which you of Texas are taking in the training of the generation that is now coming up. A thing that is distressing to me to see is when sometimes the man and woman who have done well in life show a curious inability to train their own children in the way that has resulted successfully for themselves. I think that all of us know people who, because they have worked hard and triumphed, feel that somehow or other they will spare their children the acquisition of the very qualities which have made the parents triumph. Too often you see the man, and I am sorry to say the woman, who says, “I have had to work hard; my sons and my daughters shall have an easy time.” Such a man or woman is preparing ruin for the children about whom this is said. Of course, you want to give your children all the love possible; but it is not right to mistake folly for affection. When you spare the child that which alone will enable it to conquer in after life, you are not giving it a blessing; you are doing it the greatest wrong in your power. Bring up the boy and girl alike with the understanding that life is not generally soft, is not generally easy, that there will be plenty of rough times, and that what they have to show is not the spirit that avoids difficulties and flinches from them, but the spirit which overcomes them. Let each of the older among you look back upon your lives. You men of the Civil War; what are the times of which you are proudest? What are the memories you are most glad to hand down to your children and your children’s children? The times that were easy? No. You are proud to remember and have them remember the days of toil, of peril, of effort, the days when you had to risk life and endure every form of hardship and of labor, when you had in you the spirit that made you endure it, that made you rise level to the great need. Surely you must not rob your sons of the right to feel in their turn the same pride that you now feel in the power to overcome difficulty, the power to work, the power of wresting triumph out of danger.