MR. JOHNSON ON THE COLLEGE COLOR

The following quotation from an article by Rev. J. E. Johnson '66 in the Dartmouth Bema just published will be of interest to those who have looked into the matter of the adoption of our college color. A complete investigation of this subject was made a few years ago by Professor E. J. Bartlett and the results were published in the Dartmouth Bi-Monthly for April, 1908. To quote from Mr. Johnson:

"As long as grass grows and water runs and mountains abide, Old Dartmouth will survive. Her color was well chosen. It was chosen by my class in college, '66. Harvard started the idea. She chose crimson and then (as she has so often done) passed the buck to Dartmouth. She said, 'lt is your move next.' A committee was appointed by the senior class of which my room-mate Sellew was chairman. There were not ten men in the class who knew green from blue, and so it was decided to take counsel of two of the best known and best loved young women in the town, one the daughter of President Smith and the other the daughter of Professor Sanborn. Sally Smith was an ideal young American gentlewoman, intelligent, beautiful, and amiable. Kate Sanborn was bright, bonnie and buxom. Sally died only lately and left the whole world poorer for it. I was one of her follower. but at a great distance. Just as an asteriod might follow a central sun. Well! to these two girls we were indebted for the choice of our color. They decided promptly and peremptorily on green—as being the handsomest of all colors; and so green it was and is and always will be. Green is the color of the earth when she is at her best; the most beautiful habiliment of all Dame Nature's wardrobe. It is God Almighty's 'Outing Color.'

"We sometimes call it 'the living green.' Sons of Old Dartmouth, keep her memory green!"