ADDRESS AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNERSTONE OF THE NEW GYMNASIUM

When, in 1867, George H. Bissell, pioneer in the development of petroleum, provided, at the wise desire of President Smith, yonder "commodious and tasteful structure" with its six bowling alleys and "most improved gymnastic apparatus and furniture," it was ample for the freshman class of sixty-three members, or in turn for the whole undergraduate College of two hundred and thirty-four. For comparison, Amherst, Harvard, and Yale had been similarly equipped for about seven years; and the total number of Freshmen at Yale was 174, and at Harvard 156, that same autumn when our entering class numbered 63.

"The results" of the gymnasium, we are told officially within the first year, "more than equalled the expectations." "Dyspepsia, debility, and other affections incident to a sedentary life," became for the time unknown ; "and the increased muscular power and agility of the young men forced themselves upon the attention of even unpracticed eyes."

But spaciousness for 234 is straightened circumstances for 1300. And forty years is long life in the mechanical world where every five years the machines may profitably go to the scrap heap. So in 1907, in that desperate forced march to bring the material resources of the College into line with the human demand, Bissell Hall was the most conspicuous object in the rear.

Since the restoration of Dartmouth Hall and the completion of Webster had been an incubatory period significant with precursory rumblings. There was to be a fresh explosion of Dartmouth compressed air, and a year and a half ago the power was applied. Doctor Bowler said firmly, "Dartmouth is going to have a new gymnasium"; President Tucker said, "Amen to that"; Doctor Nichols a little later came into sympathetic relation to the central kinetics. Edward K. Hall said, for the alumni, "We will get it, and I know the men who not only will help start something but will also keep it moving and stay with it to the end." And so were formed the Gym Committee, and the sub-committee from each class since '84, and the local committees. You have read their names in the Gymnasium News. This building is not the gift of any one set or kind of men. There are today about 3000 contributors ; the largest single gift is $5000; one $2000 subscription comes next, followed by thirteen donations of $1000 each.

And how cheerfully the money has been given. From the undergraduate who put down his $25 and sent the news to father, or the other who pledged and earned his $5 or $10, up to the makers of the checks in three and four figures, it has been a gift and not a tax.

A friend said to the subscriber of the largest sum, "So he (mentioning a local solicitor), got $5000 out of you?" "No," was the reply, "he didn't get it out of me. I had made up my mind to give it before I heard from him at all."

Among the up-builders of these walls many mighty men have conspired together. Some are now stiff in the knees; others are round where once they were angular, and are as well-padded by Nature as formerly by the outfitter's art; the slam from full speed upon the frozen earth which once they bore like rubber balls, would now put them to bed for a month, and the twenty-foot slide to a base would make busy the bone-setter and the skin-grafter; some of those deep-chested runners puff as they go up the subway steps, and take the elevator for the first floor above the street; but prosperity has softened only to ripen and mellow; the fat may have reached the purse but not the heart or the head.

A believer in the conservation and correlation of0 energy need not mourn these changes. They have their compensations. For one who formerly at the crack of bat could connect with the sphere whizzing from 300 feet hence, can now as keenly discern the price of wheat six months away; another now runs his course in a far away land as steadfastly as on the two-mile track; another with the same cogent vitality that gave him place upon three college teams has brought this enterprise through to its present success; another than whom no more ferocious object ever plunged through the opposing line, now by contrast is making a fine career in a gentlest field of scientific medicine; of the "curatores reverendice honorandi" — how great the loss of this sonorous phrase from the Commencement stage — one furnishes as keen a service to the College as on the tennis-court; another stands firm behind the administrative bat, or continues to make opportune hits for the College; while a third has lately taken up his work as a walking delegate from the alumni. Only samples these from hundreds.

And the cheering section has not been idle; its money has spoken as unitedly as its voice of yore — as its voices on the 6th and 13th of November next — and has shown us the one glorious'way in which the game can be won from the side-lines.

And the roofs of Hallgarten and the steps of Culver have brought their offerings.

These all cannot much profit by the gifts they have made. Their reward must be in the hearts of newly matriculated college generations. How delightful if we "could bring them all back, — the athletes, softened, stiffened, adiposed, the restful ones, unsuppled and untoughened — cut off their cigars and cocktails or whatever indulgences of the prosperous life, put them upon the training diet of Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah - "pulse to eat and water to drink" — and have them meet daily for required exercise, to lay their fingers upon the floor without bending the knees, to twist that burdensome abdomen forward and backward and sideways, to touch their fingertips behind the back, to send the unwonted air swirling to the diaphragm, to repeat these restorative acts until the joints creaked and the muscles, growled, to take the cure for a month.

The givers of this building have not had the full benefits of a gymnasium themselves, and their gift promises to others a better chance than their own. The highest utility of a gymnasium has never been demonstrated at Dartmouth, for which conditions, rather than persons are responsible. Even when the classes were more commensurate with the floor space of Bissell Hall the students never entered with unquestioning enthusiasm into those uniform enforced exercises of twisting their healthy bodies first to the right and then to the left, extending and flexing their prehensile digits without pinching anything, though they always saw to it that the dumb-bells crashed properly upon the floor.

They have much preferred "that which is puerile, such as playing with balls, bowls, and other ways of diversion" reprehended to the pupils of the Indian School and of the College by the great founder. Perhaps even rather would they "turn the course of their diversions and exercise for their health to the practice of some manual wits, or cultivation of gardens and other lands at the proper hours of leisure and intermission from study" further recommended by the same hygienic authority.

Few men, in all the years of Bissell "Hall, look back with complete satisfaction upon its opportunities ; nevertheless it has been the only in-door gymnasium and full of •occupation. Class exercises, romping or listless, of late the peculiar privilege of Freshmen, have there been required; weighings and measurings have been taken at long intervals, furnishing interesting evidence how men grow four years older while going through college, but little that the individual has actually used in his development ; spectacular gymnasts have functioned therein, doing the giant's swing, hanging head downward from the flying trapeze, or tumbling upon a mattress; scufflers at basketball have constantly defied the "rules of the game." Athletes have there girded themselves for the contest and there washed off its sweat and its grime, forgetting their weary muscles in the zest of victory, or finding that the acuteness of an ache depends upon how one feels; and there have come off the concert, the lecture, the play, the dinner, the ball. Its walls the most of any now, except perhaps the church, carry the faint echoes of the distinguished past.

A great instrument, like this building rising before us, will be watched eagerly for results. It is no toy, and its usefulness will appear in applications now undiscovered; but we can foresee in part. It must come into systematic and properly directed use like the other laboratories of the College. Weighings and measurings surely will be taken at frequent intervals — an excessive undertaking — and on them will be based definite corrective exercises for the individual need, required and followed up. The physically deficient, the superficial breathers, the fish-mouthed, the narrow chested, the round shouldered, the one-sided, the undeveloped will be made to work from day to day in persistent and well-taught rectification until they can reach and maintain a passing mark. No one man can do the work thus demanded, and this building should be manned like other departments in which individual instruction is given — as all the laboratories should be but are not — not as for those who lecture to 300 or who can do their work by three hours a week with a class, a book, and a chair, but modestly, merely so that instructors on duty six to eight hours a day, may work with divisions of about fifteen and give examinations to all, and adequate care to the deficient. An endowment is the logical consequence of the building.

This gymnasium never could have come to the College as a general gift of the alumni without the money and the determined team-work of enthusiasts for intercollegiate sports. But they may have created a rival to their own dearest love. Certainly herein lies the opportunity for those who think the athlete already too luminous, who loudly oppose competitive athletics, and depict the terrible condition in which they allege the many sit upon the grandstand and shout themselves hoarse while the selected and pampered few strive for the illustrated supplement, to accomplish the unattained and work out activities for the multitude which shall bear the fruit and slough the excresences of our intercollegiate games. Thus, perhaps, would be carried out the wishes of many generous contributors who do not greatly love the public display.

We believe that those also who thought as much of athletics as of physical culture will not be disappointed in the help they will have from this great building. New problems are to be solved; conditions are constantly changing; but if intercollegiate contests and the training therefor have, as many of us believe, made college life more decent, made men more clean in mind and body, rendered malice and brutality less common, helped men to work shoulder to shoulder with others without distinction of class, taught them to sacrifice themselves to a common cause, to come to a common rallying piont in after life, to send back their hopes and their aid to their alma mater, then college athletics will go on. They have become morally and ethically sounder during the period in which they have come to a greater importance, in those institutions that possess them instead of being possessed by them. And we look to a future of distinctly higher plane and better proportion, provided always the college administration regards them as activities to be regulated wisely rather than suppressed or allowed to run wild.

I venture to quote here words that I used on another occasion because I am willing, I hope Dartmouth is willing, to stand firm upon the issue they imply:

"A college is an educational institution — a point to be emphasized — not an ath- letic club, a hippodrome, or a box office. Athletic sports have their place in the college not as an end in themselves, nor yet as a necessary evil, but because notwithstanding some excesses they have an important part in the development of the man. And they are not doing their part if they do not teach him a clean life, steadiness, persistence to the end, fairness, honesty, obedience to law and to authority, to act as part of an organization, to make self secondary to the common purpose.

"Into the college at one end of the four years pours very raw material, and from the other end issues a refined but not perfected product. Viewed as a process acting upon the individual, the changes are vast. The graduate goes out with higher morals, ideals, and ethical standards than his earlier self. The mixture of units to casual notice may seem to remain the same, but to the close observer its average opinion and standard is always changing, in some cases with surprising rapidity.

"The youthful standard of sport is crude, even barbaric — anything to win, always to win. And it is as much the duty of the institution that encourages athletic sport to bring its standards up "to those of the best sportsmanship as to foster sound scholarship, scientific honesty, and good citizenship. That means unwavering purpose, steady pressure in the right direction, with no more despair at low results, or at the incoming of a new - generation of the untaught, than in English or algebra, and with no more deference to hasty or opportune undergraduate votes than in the matter of holidays or examinations. On the other hand the well-taught undergraduate becomes a clear-sighted and discriminating man, and his enlightened judgment can be trusted on all issues to which he comes without excitement or immediate self interest."

Here then may the daring gymnasts exercise their craft upon the ropes and bars and ladders; here the faculty may practice basketball and self-control; here we hope will be a compulsory course in swimming with the diploma of the College in jeopardy. Here will the skillful foster and augment their cunning, the strenuous prepare for the struggles of the strong, the fit be selected for the contest and constant watchfulness be exercised to maintain their fitness. And under these spacious arches Hanover spring will not so linger in the lap of winter but that a track team can go forth in May in form to compete, and the baseball team — a full month late out of doors — will take the field as ready as those of temperate climes.

It has appeared more and more that Dartmouth's athletic strength does not lie in combinations of athletic stars who wander hither, or who are coerced by the logic of superior argument. It is not natural to wander hither; one must design to come; and students whose college course is determined by athletic argument can well be spared. Our greatest opportunity lies in the development on the spot of homogeneous teams that take the field in perfect physical condition animated by the best spirit of sport. Such contestants are Dartmouth athletes in the truest sense. And how this gymnasium will stand as a bulwark for that policy all can see.

The human male of nineteen who eners college may be called by some homosapiens adolescens, but to me, on the average, he is a boy; and a less mature Boy than formerly. This is merely stated as an observation, but it is supported by the more scientific deductions of Dr. Charles L. Dana, who said to us in his Commencement address, "I would like to be a college president just for a day so that I could send out into the market place some views about our modern eastern colleges which have of late lacked conspicuous approval because they do not recognize that modernity has delayed adolescence, and that the college boy having still an unripe brain, is not to be treated with the responsibilities of mature manhood." And he adds, "It has been my experience that a very large number of boys go to college and have responsibilities thrust upon them for which they are not physically or physiologically ready. It is very well to say that at eighteen or twenty a boy would be a man, but putting on the toga does not change the processes of metabolism. I think that it is in accordance with the laws of evolution that, as a man becomes a higher type, he lives longer, and works later; he should also have a longer childhood."

There may be abstruse reasons for this, but I mention obvious ones. Your father's father — I speak to my contemporaries — said to his son, "I will give you your time," and the instrument was signed and witnessed. If by working summers and teaching winters the eccentric lad set out to make his way through college, the father felt blameless of the doubtful experiment. Your father said, "I'll help you." But it was only by close economy and much helping yourself that you accomplished your purpose. Now you say, "I want my boy to have all the comforts he is used to at home," and mother often comes to see that he is properly fitted out. When you were in college half or two-thirds of the class were away teaching three months in the winter. As late as 1869-70 the Harvard catalogue announces, "School-keeping. Meritorious students, whose circumstances require it, may, at the discretion of the faculty, be absent for a limited time, not exceeding thirteen weeks, including the winter vacation for the purpose of keeping school." And the same custom survived at Dartmouth for ten or fifteen years longer. The student teacher, in school hours at least, was forced to early manhood.

The college boy of today has more commonly been cared for all his life. He meanders socially through the college; a smile of joy comes over his pleasant features when we tell him that he has passed, and he has only polite concern when we add that he might have done better. He can say, "I don't know, sir," with an amiable self-possession, with even a consideration for our embarrassment that in itself deserves a favorable mark. He breaks and his father pays. Sixty dollars does not seem to him an excessive price for a suit of clothes, although his father to this day finds it hard to get by a $12 suit in the window. He is known afar by his plumage. Until of late he has gone all winter bareheaded (as soon as he got over being a Freshman), without an overcoat or gloves, and exposing his ornamental hose to the weather, though better customs now prevail. In a crowd he may be thoughtless of others, mischievous, and excitable, but not discourteous, malicious, or mean. He would not stand the cruder ways of former years, and he rarely breaks out into conspicuous inebriety or willful rowdyism. He is a phase in a development that is not to be hurried and is much too good to be wasted. Whether he wakes to ambition, as we regard ambition, in his junior or in his senior year, or not till after, a precarious diploma, he makes as substantial a man as his father and his father's father.

If the maturing process, physical, social, mental, moral, moved evenly, like a roller of the sea, it could be treated effectively by indiscriminating machines. But it is more like the variety of gardens, in which the peas shoot out of the frozen ground, and the pansies smile at the unseasonable snows of May, while the limas rot in the early cold, the bush beans wilt at the breath of frost, the corn waits for the warmest sun, and the late tomatoes ripen when hand-picked and laid in the dark. The soft, juicy apples of fall have no endurance, and the russets, sound and mellow in the spring, defy the teeth in the autumn. And the weeds have their varying nature and predominance; — the pig - weed, aggressive and obvious, but once pulled with the soil shaken from its roots it is dead where it lies; the pursley lying low, deathless until it ripens its seed, unless both eradicated and removed; and the subterranean wireweed burrowing persistently in all directions, setting forth on the surface mere offshoots from the vicious life below.

So in the uneven development of the youth the longing for friends predominates for a time and he gives too much for popularity; or curiosity rules until he learns by experience the defiling nature of pitch: another craves recognition as an individual by any means that seem to give him importance; another is too superstitious in all things; another is overcome with the lassitude of growth; and in another is that strange slowness of reaction that simulates stupidity. Phases all. Mere study does not impress him; the world is too interesting for abstractions ; he does not hear in the college talk any admiration for scholars; it does not seem a passion in the teaching staff. For years at the greatest college pageant for the recognition of scholarship — the Phi Beta Kappa initiation — not more than six or eight of the faculty have been present.

There is the familiar story of the athlete who after a brief connection with the college averred that the only unsatisfactory condition in college life was "those studies," and this has its equally significant obverse in the instructors whose work would be wholly congenial if it were not for "those students."

Perhaps in passing from the in locoparentis to the "at owner's risk" position we have ignored conditions that are fundamental and vital.

Let us agree without argument, although we may state it in different forms, that the chief office of this or any college is to make men, — fit to serve their day and generation, and that a common quality of the man-stuff, the loveable college boy with his immeasureable possibilities, is that his soul is reached through his body.

Now into this scheme of a college to make men, comes as an adjuvant, subordinate to the great end, this noble building.

Its prime function is not to make athletes, though we hope it will make more than ever; nor acrobats, though doubtless they have their uses; nor for the calisthenic drills, of unquestioned advantage; nor as a playground for games. But to bring the bodies under subjection, to hold the coming men steady while they are gaining their balance and theioutlook upon the world; to be a well-adjusted part of the great plant that is sending forth others to shoulder the burdens and take the places by and by, of those of whose helpfulness this gymnasium is a token.