Hough Room Dedicated
The class of 1879 holding its Fiftieth Reunion during Commencement dedicated June 16 its room in the Baker Memorial Library which the class has furnished in memory of Judge Charles N. Hough, a former member of the class. The president of '79, Thomas Proctor, presided at the ceremonies and presented to the members of the class and friends present H. B. Thayer '79, a trustee of the College. After his re'marks Judge William Cohen of the class spoke concerning the history of the room and its dedication to Judge Hough. President Ernest M. Hopkins, who attended the dedication, and as the last speaker on the program addressed the class informally. Judge Cohen's remarks were:
"It must be in the circumstance that it was my privilege to have met Judge Hough in Meriden, New Hampshire, at least a year before he came to Hanover and met you, that I am called upon to dedicate this dignified and beautiful room to his memory.
"I recall rather vividly that first meeting in Meriden. He came marching into the little town from an army post in the West and I, timidly from the City of New York. Neither of us had ever been away from home before. We felt lost and needed companionship and sympathy. We gave both to each other and from that time, over a period of 52 years, our intimacy continued uninterruptedly except for a brief period when he was studying law in Philadelphua and I, in New York. Except for his sister I do not think there is any one now living who knew him longer or more intimately.
"From Kimball Union Academy we came together to Hanover—he, admirably fitted for the entrance examinations and I, utterly unfit. Together we went before Professor Lord and passed the ordeal—he with great eclat—I, just barely scraping through.
"We roomed together in the attic of one of the Smith houses and it was not a fair cotenancy. I think we met the expenses equally but that was all. I think in that period of a year's living together I never made my bed. He always made it for me although I cannot say that he made it with great regularity; and little wonder because the slats were nearly all broken in my bed and the interstices all covered with books of various dimensions and everything was wrecked except the central dugout where I burrowed until Hough came to the rescue and straightened things out for a day or two.
"Being comparatively far from home we sometimes spent our winters in Hanover browsing together in the old library in Reed Hall, with no interruptions, and it was there that he did the omniverous reading of the best English authors and laid the foundation of that broad culture and of the lucid, forceful style that in future stood him in good stead.
"After our Freshman year we journeyed together to Philadelphia to the Exposition of '76 and I remember how we were both overawed by its magnitude and beauty.
"In all that long period of friendship (which is not given to many men to enjoy) I can not now remember a single quarrel. There were then, as in all later life, differences of opinion between us. He had strong views on most subjects and he expressed them with vigor. He condemned those with which he could not agree but it was always with the views and never with the exponent of them that his quarrel was
"Upon his coming to New York we were both members of the Alumni Association of that city and he never missed a meeting except when he was in the hospital.
"When he married, as he did rather late in life, our association became closer, if anything. Then began the greatest love of his life; namely, for his congenial helpmate, by whose presence we are honored and for his fine children, Nancy and John Hough, who are also here. The next greatest love of his life, I think, was the college. It was here that he spent most of his vacations.
"I can picture his indignation if he could have read an article in a recent issue of Harper's manifestly by one of that class of writers whose chosen method of attracting attention is to say something startling whether true or not. The title of this partial and one-sided article is "The Saturnalia of College Reunions" and from reading it you would think there was nothing in any of them except clownish costumes and alcohol; that no man ever got out of college except what he paid for in tuition fees and maybe then there was an over-payment; that in college friendships there was nothing and therefore renewing them, less than nothing. It is only with pity that one can look upon a writer who loses all the beauty and fragrance of life and becomes so material as to be bored with the enthusiasm of youthful associations and what is gotten from them. Judge Hough's love of manly sentiment and of broad culture and of grace of style, the foundation of which he received here at Dartmouth, is a standing rebuke to such materialism and methods.
"To me, it affords the greatest gratification that if he could have been consulted about a memorial to him how keenly he would have responded that this room in this library would have been the nearest possible to his heart. Compared to such tilings as mausoleums and monuments of marble and granite, the comparison utterly fails. To Thayer for the thought that created the idea, and to Mr. Larsen, the architect, for attention to the details that followed upon the thought, we cannot be sufficiently grateful.
"In the name of the Class we dedicate to the Classmate we love, this room, so imposing and beautiful, as a fitting memorial to him who strove for culture in its broadest sense, namely, the best that mankind has ever thought or expressed not as a dead and barren thing, but as a spur to better and nobler aims in those who come after."
