GRADUS AD PARNASSUM

After seven years in the old country John Spaghetti is back at his Webster Hall station selling plaster of Paris skulls (for ash trays), "Billycan" and "Billycan't," bull-dogs, small busts of Mozart and Beethoven, and if the boys don't like any of those the revelation of a green goddess, unclothed, soon brings forth the necessary small change. John seems just the same as ever, his usual jovial and rugged self. Perhaps he stutters a little more. M-mm-mus-mussolini comes hard but it comes often, for II Duce is his idol.

One realizes how quickly one college generation gives way to another in noting, sadly, that no welcoming item in TheDartmouth greeted John's coming to town. Instead there was a sharp editorial comment to the effect that a pedler on the steps of Webster indicated that Palaeopitus had overlooked a concession! But this doesn't bother John. He finds it only natural to expect indifference but he says it won't last long. "I'll get them back all right, don't worry." Now, after a few days, there's always a group of students around him—some buying, others listening to stories of Italy and of what he has seen and heard in other New England colleges. And those gestures!

John reports with great animation and pride that Ev Baker '24 came to see him in his native village a few summers ago. We can't tell the story as John tells it but it seems that this was the day when the wine was put in bottles and who should appear but Ev and two ladies. It had been a long hard day. The wine needed frequent tasting and had received this attention from John and his brother. The visitors arrived late in the day, after several hours of testing, tasting, and bottling. John is sure that Ev came and also that he helped him with the bottling, etc. But he's looking forward to checking up on all the details when he sees Ev on his trip to Brown next month.

With an enrollment of nearly a hundred girls Bennington College, at Bennington, Vermont, has embarked upon its first year. In its "Announcement for the First Year," a most attractive and interesting publication, the aims of the college, including its academic and recreational plans, are set forth. Here, certainly, is something different in the way of education for women.

Students will do their major work in either arts, music, literature, social studies, or science. They will enroll in their specialized field as soon as aptitude in trial courses demonstrates their fitness to do so. Every student, from the beginning of her college career, will have an individual counselor. This plan "replaces general faculty regulations with an individualized program aiming at continuity, correlation, and integration of work." Another interesting feature of the experiment is the lack of any extra-curricular activities since all musical, dramatic, and literary enterprises become essential parts of the curriculum.

Most of us know very little about it but why coaches refuse to make substitutions in hard, exhausting games is still a mystery. On a warm afternoon such as the day of the Lafayette game players who stayed in the whole game, or most of it, took a lot of punishment and lost a lot of poundsmore than seemed necessary. If they could rest for the ensuing few weeks this might be beneficial but how can they all play 60 minutes of smashing football against Pennsylvania, Harvard, and Yale on the subsequent three Saturdays?

It is a commonly accepted fact that no hockey team is a real one unless it carries two well-balanced forward lines, the rules allowing for unlimited substitutions. Leaving the one or two particular stars of the team on the ice for a whole game of this gruelling sport seems short-sighted in the extreme, but even so the temptation is too much for many a coach. Of all college athletics perhaps basketball is the only other sport that demands and gives opportunity for the avoidance of physical endurance tests. And here again, it is apparently beyond the will power of the coach to make substitutions until actual necessity for doing so arises.

"Substitute Wins Game"—isn't this headline seen frequently enough to justify the coach taking a chance on a fresh man when he feels that he'd like to but doesn't quite dare? Hasn't he got other games coming, and other seasons, when substitutes must be ready to step in and play the A-1 game that he expects of the regulars? Doesn't the coach spend hours of pre-game practice perfecting the timing, passing, shooting, kicking, or precision and team play of his second- and third-string players? Under the new football rules players taken out in one period of the game may return to play in any subsequent period. A fair interpretation of this more lenient regulation is that it permits a coach to rest his best players and put them back in the game with renewed vim, vigor, and vitality, when they are needed and when the three V's are important attributes to possess. The new rules also encourage the participation of a larger number of players.

Eddie Dooley '26 writes in this issue on football rules, especially of the significance of the 1932 regulations of the game. He also discusses the great football "systems" so much in vogue in colleges throughout the country. And other questions of interest to the expert and the onlooker alike are commented upon in his current article "This Game of Football." As special writer for the New York Sun and football broadcasting authority for the Columbia network Eddie is proving himself as much of an analyst off the field as he was a strategist in undergraduate days at Dartmouth.

He figured prominently in spectacular plays during his three years as varsity quarterback in the time of Oberlander, Tully, Sage, Parker, Diehl, Lane, Horton, Davis and other famous proteges of Jess Hawley. But no play of Eddie's was more brilliant than his tackle of Hammond in the Harvard game of 1924. The Harvard back had three interfering teammates ahead of him and a clear field except for Dooley, the safety man. The interference charged at Eddie but he knifed through, got his man, and saved the game for Dartmouth, 6-0.

Other contributors to this issue include E. Gordon Bill, Director of Admissions and Dean of Freshmen. He is welcomed again to these columns with his interesting summary of figures revealing the class of 1936 in a statistical light. Dexter Martin of the entering class inaugurates "The Diary of a Freshman" in this issue. His home is in Minneapolis and his father is W. A. Martin, Dartmouth 1907. Pennington Haile '24, author of "Equinox," a poem of Hanover fall and foliage, is instructor in Philosphy and is on leave of absence this year.

Attention of alumni is again called to the section of books, "Hanover Browsing," now edited monthly by Prof. Rees H. Bowen of the Dartmouth faculty. Some correspondence and inquiries relating to literature have come to him as a result of his October installment of this section of the MAGAZINE. Others are invited to secure his opinion on book questions of particular interest to any of his readers.

The index for Volume 24 of the MAGAZINE may now be secured from the business manager for the asking. Alumni who preserve a file of the Dartmouth MAGAZINE will find this index useful in reference work and in making more complete their collection of such Dartmouthiana.

S. C. H.