Class of 1899
Year by year the '99 Summer Tours grow in popularity. Tim's Tour Number 3 of the present scribe cleaned up the Vermont locale as thoroughly as Tour Number 2 disposed of the Maine region last year. Some forty class contacts were made in the four-day swing.
On Thursday, August 4, Tim Lynch and his good wife Detta ignited the spark by spending the night by Charlie Donahue's boyhood fireside in Milford, N. H. By Friday the fire of friendship was kindling apace. From the south came the Secretary and his wife; from Gardner, Mass., came Owen and Minnie Hoban; and from Plymouth, N. H., came George Clark with '99's staunch friends, Ned and Mrs. Warren. This first group converged on Plainfield, N. H., and took possession for an hour of Wesley Jordan's beautiful hillside farm, with welcome provided by Wesley and his wife and the two girls, Barbara and Winifred.
Thence the tour swept on to Hanover, where lunch at the Outing Club headquarters on the golf links added new faces to the group. There were Jim Richardson and Nelson Brown with their wives and Dave Storrs. After lunch the crowd looked in on Frank Musgrove's wife, who has been carrying on the printing business since he left. Then the original party set out for St. Albans, Vt., with their spirits exhilarated by the addition of Dave's company. Dave kept thinking he was going to drop out, but day by day he held on, never returning to his bookstore till the following Monday, when Tim reluctantly dropped him off at the Concord railroad station.
Weary Wardle and his wife had already reached St. Albans, and were ready with Dr. and Mrs. Ed Hyatt and their son Allen with his wife to greet the visitors. This was appropriate, for Weary and Mrs. Wardle were host and hostess to Tour Number 1 at Grand Mere, Que., in 1930. Rab Abbott's daughter, visiting in Burlington, had been already picked up, and a flying trip paid by the Secretary to Clarence Joy and his family in Proctor. There were also two local Dartmouth undergraduates whom Ed Hyatt's hospitality included in the general celebration, John Davidson and Gordon Dewart.
There was a famous hill to climb and a boat ride on Lake Champlain, but the great event of the afternoon was the golfing on the fine grounds of the Champlain Country Club. The contest of the day was a foursome between Weary and Hobe and Dave and Tim. Lost balls, stolen caddies, dubious scores, and an adequate vocabulary are among the traditional assets of a genuine '99 sporting fray, and they were not lacking on this occasion. All was forgiven and forgotten, however, at the dinner that night, served at the Tavern right across the driveway from Ed Hyatt's home. The nineteen hilarious diners would have thrown the peerless Ed Wynn into the shade, while the Dartmouth banners and other decorations in color, including some unique devices of the Tavern chef, created an effective background. There were afterdinner words of loyal sentiment, echoes of the golfers' conflicting tales, and a real class candle blazing faithfully in a ginger ale bottle forced into service as a candelabrum.
Sunday morning, August 7, saw the '99 caravan trekking to St. Johnsbury and challenging fate by another substantial banquet, prepared this time at the St. Johnsbury House. The eighteen diners included some new faces: Tedo Chase and his wife; Herbert and Mrs. Lyster and their son Leland, Mexican mining engineer, Harold French, and Louis Benezet.
From St. Johnsbury to Plymouth was an inevitable sequel, and there at George Clark's hospitable farm occurred the last pow-wow of the comrades of the open road. New comrades were not lacking, namely, Guy and Eva Speare, Rab and Mrs. Ab- bott of Manchester, and Ernest Silver.
But a far echo of Tour Number 3 came from Chicago, where that very Sunday Walter and Florence Eastman had got together in their La Grange home another group. Besides the Eastmans there were present Peddy and Mrs. Miller, Bill and Mrs. Wason, Fred and Mrs. Pope ('98), Jed Prouty (1900), and Mr. and Mrs. Ray Thomas. Mr. Thomas is a trustee of Olivet College and a former student of Peddy's at that place. Doc Cushman was out of town, or the entire local delegation of '99 would have been present. In some future '99 report there will no doubt appear an authentic account of the round-the-world reminiscences of Peddy and his wife that afternoon and evening. Their respective dealings with kings, princes, mandarins, and bandits in the wilds of Asia must not be lost to the treadmill thralls of American routine.
Bids for Tim's Tour Number 4, as of August, 1933, are now impatiently awaited.
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Secretary,41 West Kirke St., Chevy Chase, Md.
