THE VANISHED PUMPS OF YESTERDAY

With this issue the editor of this section of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE takes a long and reverential backward glance to a dear departed past and announces, in accents weak and quavering, the opening in Hanover of another tea room. This one is "The Blue Spruces."

For some time now the unprincipled scoundrels responsible for this sort of thing have been insidiously invading the precincts of our beloved "Mother of Men," plying their nefarious trade and dispensing their liquid unrighteousness almost in the open. It is only poetic justice that one of the victims of their deviltry should now turn and point at them a trembling but accusing finger. All, all save him are gone, who watched the slow relentless spread of vice.

There was the late C. M. Stearns, English instructor and reader, who in the dim seclusion of Sanborn Hall and later of his den on College street brewed hellish potions of Oolong and English Breakfast, and at times the honeyed viciousness of Orange Pekoe, first of the barbarian invaders in our midst. There was Miss Nye, equestrienne and lady, who as a mask of innocence kept always a sleigh on the front porch of the "Teapot Hill Tea Room," just outside of Norwich. There gathered prodigals of every rank and in the inevitable and sinister "back room" Gene Markey, Paul Reps, Amos Blandin and other sunken spirits of a better world met frequently to read together the vile outpourings of their depraved pens. (Yes,—and Markey one time imitating Christopher Marlowe, stabbed himself in the eye with a pork chop. What a night! ! !) Tom Prendergast, himself, sunk in these depths of iniquity, flung himself away to New York to sell auto-trucks. Only thus was he saved.

Came the establishment of "Ye Candle Glow" when Mrs. Dymock so prospered at the Newton Inn that brazenly and openly she catered to the weakness of our finest men. (Oh! The vanished pumps of yesterday!) Now is the flood tide of our sin upon us! In Norwich are two sinks of iniquity, "The Tea Kettle" and "The Fireside."

In Hanover, under the very roof where but a few years past Jim Haggerty flew into terrifying but magnificent rages when asked for a spoon without egg on it, the dreadful tea bag holds its evil sway. (We know what, in his last years broke Jim's heart—aye, we know and it wasn't his mashie shots, either!) Why! In the very confines of the Graduate Club itself, tea is being served Wednesday and Friday afternoons—with cinnamon toast, and hot rolls, and cheese dreams! (Quick, Watson! The needle!) And in these places have grown up coteries who munch and sip and prattle Art and Red Revolution.

Down Main street near the A. and P.— (if only that last line of our defense can stand!) is "The Green Lantern." Chopped egg sandwiches, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, "Brownies"—(Brownies! Brownies!— shades of Clark Tobin and Stan Llewellyn, Bill Nagle and Guy Keddie!)—these things may be had for the asking.

And now comes "The Blue Spruces." But that,—that is not the worst. This we have saved for the too too bitter end. Down Wheelock street—it can't, it can't be written, —and yet—it must be. . . . Down Wheelock street Oh! Lift but one helping hand ere we succumb! There is "The Plaid Pig Tea Room." It is too much!

Somewhere in the history of the decline of Rome there must be a parallel to this hideous thing. There always is. But we can think only of the cry from England of the early days, "The barbarians drive us into the tea, and the tea throws us back upon the barbarians."

Scofflaw ! Scofflaw ! Scofflaw !