CONCERNING MR. POWERS' BOSTON ALUMNI DINNER ADDRESS
Major E. D. Redington '61 has sent the editor a copy of a letter to Mr. Powers written after he had read the address of the latter at the Boston Alumni dinner in the winter. Most of Mr. Powers' address is printed elsewhere in this number but the further information from Major Redington is so appropriate and interesting in itself that we have felt it should be given to the alumni also. Major Redington writes as follows:
I have received a copy of your address on "Character Sketches of Dartmouth Men," which I have read with intense interest. I notice what you say in connection with the statement that you had seen one or more members of each class graduating from Dartmouth in the last 105 years and that, if someone else had made it, you would not believe it. Therefore, as I have seen one or more members who have graduated in 112 classes, I shall expect you to vote me into the Ananias Class. Previous to the class of 1819, I have seen graduates of 8 classes and in each class since that year I have seen one or more men, except in the class of 1821.
Early in 1861—the year of my graduation I met, in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, Moses Chase of the class of 1797 who died in that year at the age of 89. He was born in 1772, three years after the founding of the College. Two of his grandsons were among the Alumni of the College—Charles M. Chase, 1853, and Lieut. Col. George E. Chamberlin, 1860, who was killed at Charleston, Virginia, in 1864 and whose widow established a fellowship in the College. My two sons, who graduated in 1900, were the great grandsons of Moses Chase On their mother's side, she being a sister of Col. Chamberlin.
I personally knew Thomas Jones, 1799, Jason Steele, 1812, and John W. Smith, 1817, all of them being neighbors of my father in my native town of Chelsea, Vermont, where I lived until I was 10 years old.
Judge Walbridge A. Field, whose character and attainments you so accurately portray, was the most all round scholar I ever knew, except John N. Putnam, Professor of Greek in my day. Both of them, ranked perfect through their entire course and I was in both of their classes while in College. They were very considerate and patient with students who tried to do their best, but woe betide the fellows who endeavored to extemporize an answer or demonstrate with no knowledge of the subject. They could make such a one feel so infinitesmally small as to easily believe he could go through the eye of a needle.
I do. not expect to attain the distinction of being the oldest living Alumnus of the College, but I have lived so long that I am now the oldest one in Illinois. When we organized our Chicago Alumni Association in 1876, the two oldest members were President Bartlett and Long John Wentworth, both of the class of 1836. Of the SO graduates who were charter members of the association, there are only three now living here, and I am one of the three.
I was in Boston on a business errand in 1864, and was present at the first banquet held by your association. The presiding officer was the Harvey Jewell, one of the most distinguished looking men I ever saw.
In compiling Dartmouth's "Roll of Honor, I had correspondence with not only the men who had graduated from the College but also with many other officers who could give me facts valuable for my purpose.
General Gibbon, on whose staff Lieut. Haskell was, at the battle of Gettysburg, wrote me that Haskell did more than any one man to win that battle, being at the right spot at the right time to take command in the absence of any superior officer and hold our forces at the "bloody angle."
