J. E. JOHNSON DESCRIBES POSSIBILITIES OF OUTING CLUB

It is so seldom that we have a chance to print a contribution from Mr. Johnson that it is an especial pleasure to copy the following description of the pleasure and profit of the long trail which appeared in the ManchesterUnion:

One of the organized forms of a new departure in academic education (which, after all, is only a "breeding back" to Plato walking and talking with his students among the trees of his neighbor Acadamus) is what is called The Outing Club at Dartmouth college.

It numbers in its membership about two thirds of all the undergraduates of the institution, and a considerable percentage of the faculty — say fifteen hundred in all.

The question naturally arises, "How has this recent enlargement of the scope and freedom of the college affected the Morals of the students as a whole?" To which answer may be made: "Why of old, the undergraduate body, as a whole, never had any Morals." What they had was discipline.

Anxious parents used to be told that it was "Five miles from Dartmouth college to a glass of beer," (which was at White River Junction, out of the state, in Vermont.) But like "Tee Total" statistics generally this statement was for "Home Consumption" exclusively. As a matter of fact, no boys ever went down to White River Junction for a glass of beer! What they went down for was a keg!! This was brought up to Hanover and consumed there, in the woods or in deserted farm houses, not always very far from the campus.

This had become so far a part of the college curriculum as a popular "Elective," (for which, alas, there was plenty of precedent in the "Early History" of the college,) that when, in the first stages of The Outing Club's expansion, it was proposed to build a camp on an island in the river three or four miles above The Old Bridge it was strenuously opposed by some members of the faculty, whose memory of the college ran back of the Old Bridge, on the ground that being too easily accessible from Vermont, such a camp would be used for student keg parties." And now, with few exceptions, no one at Hanover ever heard of a keg party. The connection is obvious.

Today when a Dartmouth student, a member of The Outing Club, feels over-civilized, or mentally run-down he gets out his club "duffle", buys a can of baked .beans or one of corned beef hash, whistles for other kindred spirits and their dogs, and starts for some one or more of a dozen camps of the Outing club.

This may take him five miles or fifty, up the Queen of the New England rivers, twisting and turning in its ceaselessly symmetrical convolutions up great valleys or little ones. On he goes onto several mountain tops (on one of which the club owns and maintains a stone hotel that shelters over night every summer a total of more than a thousand pedestrians a la The Swiss Alpine club,) and which, collectively, command views of more than two hundred summer camps, owned by various parties, on half a hundred ponds, lakes and rivers, in five different states.

It sounds like a fable but it is not half of the truth. It is doubtful if there can be found, this side of Switzerland another tract to match it, of its size and character.

As a "play ground" for pedestrians it is peerless. Now when our modern "Black Dan", or our Red Headed "Rufus" gets back to Hanover, he is too tired and too sore to do anything very bad or good. His mother needn't worry about him again for a week or two.

That boy does not come back without having learned something. He has been adding to his knowledge all the time he was gone when he was not asleep. Botany, Forestry, Mineralogy, Geology, Meteorology. Yes! even astronomy has been the subject of his observation and mediation, for the Heavens themselves are best studied in the open and on mountain tops; in clear weather, rather than in books and atlases. Oftentimes more than one professor "goes along" on such trips, and, incidentally, manages to work some of his particular "subject" into his young (and unsuspecting) pupils.

The writer of this remembers to have overheard a party of students on the way back to the village after a night passed at Moose Mountain camp discussing in an animated manner a talk on the subject of a Comet then visible in the heavens at night (and much discussed in the secular press) which had been given them by Professor Poor, the college astronomer, the conductor of their party the night before. Other professors who have availed themselves of hike opportunities have had similar experiences.

This is particularly true of Professor Goldthwait, the professor of Geology, who assisted by parties of students, has successfully traversed some of Professor Agassiz's theories on "The Glacial Period" based on notable data found at the Agassiz Basin at North Woodstock, one of the properties of the Dartmouth Outing club, and the site of one of its most interesting camps.

This is a live world, why not study it? It is an open book which he who runs, or walks, may read, and a good place to "hit the trail" is at Hanover, New Hampshire, halfway between the White and Green Mountains, and on the banks of "The Beautiful Blue Connecticut."