"Accolade"

The Dartmouth, in an editorial called "Accolade," bespoke the undergraduate sentiment on the death of Prof. E. F. Clark:

It is no easy task for us to try to comment upon the death of Eugene Francis Clark. This is no time for mellifluous eulogies. Any of the more pompous phrases at our command fail rather miserably, and leave us ashamed in trying to say how much his quiet sincerity was loved by Hanover and the College.

We knew him only in that slow way which shapes reputations for the calm strength and wisdom which are true greatness. One month it would be some professor whose casual sentence recorded a kindly act of friendship of the Secretary. Another time it would be an undergraduate who would mention him. Another time a townsman's speech would add to the praise of "Gene" Clark. Over the long period of years in which he loved and worked for the College and Hanover the sum total of these casual tributes grew into enduring legend of honest respect.

Until some historian appears to record the growth of the modern Dartmouth we will not be able to say just what share of the patient diplomacy and far-seeing wisdom was his. Yet the present is not the time for calculating the degree of his service. To some men is given the fame which is their due. To others an impartial Fate has only silence for efforts equally important in the achievement of common ideals. What is now important is his active membership in that coterie of Dartmouth men which has brought the College through its adolescent growing pains into its present lusty maturity.

And yet, in trying to praise the value of his service, it is even more important to his memory that we do not forget the man himself. If this were a Victorian era it would only be # proper and fitting that the accolade, a gentleman, be applied to Professor Clark. Today that word is a separate entity from the ideal of gentility which made the name, gentleman, the highest title love and respect could bestow.

So does it become necessary for us to mention both the word and the ideal which begot it before laying its mantle upon the memory of Eugene Francis Clark.