MAGAZINES DESCRIBE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL
Dartmouth's Winter Carnival has been reported yearly in newspapers and magazines. The most recent and one of the most complete accounts appears in the January number of Country Life: The article, entitled "Dartmouth's Great Winter Carnival," by Reginald T. Towns'end, editor of Country Life, describes last year's _ Carnival as seen by a person unfamiliar to Dartmouth or its Carnival. Several pictures "of skiing, snowshoeing and ski jumping are also printed.
In his article, which occupies, the two center pages, Mr. Townsend says, "Most of our colleges have a great many things in common ... but Dartmouth College in New Hampshire is fast becoming famous for a novel and unusual reason—its Winter Carnival. Dartmouth is one of the few colleges fortunate enough to be situated where it can best turn to account our rigorous winter climate and it has been far-sighted enough to make good use of this fact."
In describing the lack of snow a few days before last year's Carnival he continues, "Snow covered the ground . . . but the following day the snow disappeared. Hastily the freshmen were banded together and with sleighs and teams of horses set to work transporting snow to the ski-jump. . . . Then the entire college: professors, students and guests, gave themselves over to solemn prayer. Dartmouth must be a very pious community, for if ever prayers were answered, theirs were. All night it snowed; all the next day and far into the night."
In comparing Dartmouth's Winter Carnival to those at Saranac and Lake Placid, Mr. Townsend says, "At Dartmouth ... the costumes were different; few of the girls wore knickerbockers, and no one wore them after sundown. ... It was amusing to see a girl in evening dress,. with the sheerest of silk stockings, go clumping about the snowdrifts in arctics. That reminds me: to be in fashion in Dartmouth one must never fasten one's arctics. ... I determined to wear my arctics unbuttoned, too. ... I hastily reversed the decision."
The remainder of the article deals with a description of the outdoor and indoor activities during Carnival which "is enough to leave one gasping for breath at the end," according to Mr. Townsend.
"Some 10 years ago a student at Dartmouth included a pair of home-made skis in the baggage that he took to Hanover in the early fall. Dartmouth was a lonesome college in those days. For a hundred and fifty years it had been shut in among New Hampshire hills.... The work that he (Fred Harris) did half unknowingly at Hanover was almost another founding of the college. Today the work of the Dartmouth Outing Club is known wherever men. know of this New Hampshire college and to many it is their first introduction." Thomas Foster praises Harris' work in this fashion in his article "New England Plays All Winter," in the January number of Outing.
F. H. Harris himself in his article, "How I Learned to Ski" in the same issue: "I had the only pair of skis in town and on my crosscountry trips I rarely ever saw a ski track save my own. Old residents of Hanover tell me how astonished they were to see me for the first time climb up hill without taking off my skis. The idea then was that skis were only good for sliding down hill and that they should be carried up hill on one's back." After a trip to Montreal, Harris aroused sufficient enthusiasm to erect a ski-jump a few miles from the college.
An article on "New England Trails and Trail Makers," by L. L. Little, also tells of the work of the D. O. C. The whole copy is profusely illustrated.
