ATMOSPHERE

Once upon a time an alumnus conceived the idea of adding to the curriculum of his college a new department called "Atmosphere," a pervading influence, and endowing it with a chair or chairs, one a rocker, for giving continuous lectures on the subject.

There were in this endowment no stocks and bonds providing income to be paid to lecturers, but the chairs were to speak for themselves.

He had noticed, in his somewhat long and varied career, that places, people, buildings, homes, churches (in his early childhood) lecture halls, clubs, even bar rooms had a certain definite elusive influence each according to his kind. Even if you were not over familiar with the bar tender and his shop, if you never saw the lecturer or the teacher, if it was long, long ago they turned their various faucets, the old, old surrounding became eloquent with age.

Curiosity in part, but you hear their old feet shuffle along the floor, you seem to stand beside them, before the open window, their sightless eyes seem to gaze upon the same unchanging view. You notice a row of ancient books, you smile at the old titles, Gradus ad Parnassum, Law of Consideration, Doddridge's Sermons in 3 vols., Jones, Davis, Watts and Butler, these and many more. You are interested in their bindings and print and in their few illustrations ?

Behind the smile there is something akin to reverence, a profound respect for those who were once absorbed, refreshed, stimulated in contemplation of themes herein presented. Their earnest belief in the theories and doctrines we think we have now outgrown and in which, as then expressed, we have but an antiquarian interest. So this alumnus planned to add to "Eleazar" who "was the faculty and the whole curriculum," to gather in a little old room, old time pictures, a few chairs, a desk, old andirons and a mirror; all of which were a reflection of the period, to teach something that no professor however learned could impart to generations of students of the future.

Old age is speaking; the long procession of the years is on the platform, the joys of solitude with favorite books are here whispering their secrets to willing ears.

A knock at the door disturbs the reader, a member of the faculty is bringing his load of troubles for friendly advice and council.

Who is this who follows? Same old story, the indolent or refractory, hilarious fun loving student.

He sits down in the straightest of the straight back chairs and listens to a lecture on deportment.

Same old story, as when Adam disobeyed and became the first dirt farmer, when the first politician and liar, with Eve the original suffragette were in the majority, the first two to one, in the eternal triangle. There were threats of loss of a diploma and possible, possible expulsion. They are gone now and the perplexed Prexy takes up his book again, the candle has burned nearly to its socket, the pages cease to interest, he watches the glowing embers, listens to the wind in the forest trees. He dreams of his friends in more populous towns, he longs for the summer, the pleasant drive to his old home surroundings.

He calls on his old missionary spirit for "sustenance adequate for resignation," he is cheered by the thought that his little school is growing in numbers and in influence. Don't these and a hundred more creep into your mind, isn't every inch of this old room eloquent with the accumulated impressions of two hundred years and more, doesn't the kaleidoscope as it turns and turns give forth the grateful odor that charmed the nostrils of the worthies of 1769? Isn't all of this and more "the peculiar influence" that Webster defines as Atmosphere? "Fill the bowl up!" "Fill the bowl up!"

The Woodward. Room The portrait over the mantel is of Bezaleel Woodward