THE GENERAL ASPECT

I Entered college in the autumn of 1868, and with exception of the years from 1872 to 1879 I have known the College ever since. If occasionally I cut out from my memory the intervening years of slow change one or the other of these Dartmouths, the old or the new, is appallingly strange. Indeed their identity is not the same. I am shedding no tears. I am sorry for the loss of the small college, however it may be counterbalanced. I regret the increasing tyranny of Things. I hope and believe that high thinking has not gone away with plain living. But growth, elimination, change are laws of life.

Anyone can study the complicated modern college. So I attempt to sketch Things-As-They-Were without venture at comparison of values, earlier, or as they would be today; to recall customs and traditions which have either vanished or have been so modified in themselves and in their relations as to be no longer the same.

The scene was much more limited. If one were to start from the Inn, go north on Main St. to where Maynard St. is now, return to Elm, cross to College St., walk again to the region of Maynard, come back along College St. to Lebanon St., follow that to Main, thence to West South St., to School, and through West Wheelock to the Inn, he would traverse nearly but not quite all of Hanover Plain, or the village at the College. Of the buildings fronting on the Green only Bissell Hall, Reed, Thornton, Wentworth and the church are the same now; and every one has been much altered.