Class of 1899

The annual round-up at the University Club in Boston had to compete with the inauguration this year, for the two events both fell on Saturday, March 4. But neither this major attraction in Washington, D. C., nor the scarcity of loose currency could prevent the attendance of thirty of the faithful.

Scan the register for yourselves: Rab Abbott, Ed Allen, Jim Barney, K. Beal and Malcolm Beal, Nelson Brown, George Clark, Hale Dearborn, Charlie Donahue, George Evans, Joe Gannon, Joe Hartley, Gene Heywood, Owen Hoban, Joe Hobbs, George Huckins, Arthur Irving, Warren Kendall, Tim Lynch, Herb Miller, Dave Parker, Herb Rogers, Rodney Sanborn, Ernest Silver, Ed Skinner, Alvah Sleeper, Fred Walker, Herb Watson, Arthur Wiggin, and Phil Winchester.

The Twenty-eighth Report had come out just two days before, and everybody's mind was full of the vivid pictures that had been drawn in its pages of the six men who dropped out of the ranks during 1932. On East, West, and South the blows had fallen: Frank Musgrove in New Hampshire, John Dußois in Vermont, Pitt Drew in Massachusetts, Neal Hoskins in Michigan, Walter Foss in California, and Arthur Norton in Texas. Yet the stories that their living classmates had made of them were so revealing that these lost comrades seemed even more alive than when they were with us. And never was an evening more full of genial and enduring fellowship.

Recent messages had come from many of the men not present. Herbert Lyster was in Lakeland, Fla.; Louis Benezet was in pes Moines, visiting his son Roger, who is teaching there. Bill Greenwood and Percy Drake almost put across a plan to fetch Montie Fuller and return him to Torrington, Conn., in time for Sunday preaching. Franko French and Tedo Chase really intended to come from St. Johnsbury, and Ikey Leavitt from New York with Joe Gannon,—but either snowdrifts or bank holidays upset all their calculations.

Bill Wiggin, however, had taken no chance, but set out from northern New Hampshire in time to beat the blizzard that piled the Notch ten feet deep with snow, and Hobe timed his trip to Jamaica and Panama to such nicety that he was on hand to tell us of the big Winston Brothers construction sign in Colon, symbol of Lute Oakes' far-reaching activities. Elmer Woodman could only write of his incidental work with young people in Rolla, Mo., teaching them the piano and writing and producing plays for them, while his own boy and girl are finishing up their course at his University of Missouri School of Mines; but Phil Winchester in the midst of travel and double railroad duty on the New York Central managed to pull into Boston on time.

The Secretary also brought news from Pennsylvania of Fred Crolius, as fit and as fine in appearance as when he graced the Dartmouth backfield. And Peddy Miller came with echoes from the entire globe: of Walter Foss when he returned to San Francisco from the Philippines, with his old New England accent still strong upon him; of the adviser to the king of Siam, who turned out to be Neal Hoskins' cousin; and of Ped's own 185-word speech in Bombay that partly was responsible for his being a scholar and a lecturer at present unattached. Ped and Donnie have a bit of a debate to be resumed later as to which one has become more conservativeor radical—since leaving Hanover, and as to the exact details of the semi-Utopia which Ped visualizes for the world in from fifteen to twenty-five years.

Joe Gannon played toastmaster, it being claimed that there had been some pretty warm competition for the job and its attendant publicity, but we still want to know the rest of the details from Rodney Sanborn about Joe's driving the New York fellows up in his new car, and whether he really knows Ed Wynne or not. Hobe's additional words about Neal and Nelson's about Pitt were among the best things at the round-up, with their revelation of the versatility and intensity and humanness of them both. Dave Parker knows how to pronounce Coos County in New Hampshire, and Joe Hartley knows something about a green key in days past that sounds interesting.

But this brief picture of an indescribably fine evening must come to an end. There only remain Tim Lynch's proposal for a great get-together somewhere in middle Massachusetts the first Saturday next August, and Donnie's characteristic prayer that sometime there may be "a first Saturday night in March,"—at least once every month.

Secretary, 41 West Kirke St., Chevy Chase, Md.