Class of 1934
The fact that this is the last issue o£ the MAGAZINE for the College year calls for some thought. It appears to your scribe that the class has done well for itself in this first unsheltered year. At this still early date it is rather difficult to offer statistics on how the Fates have dealt with their 1934 pawns, but a reasonable conjecture would say "good going." Those letters which have come in ... . and there has been a goodly percentage of them, despite the occasional secretarial tearbag .... have indicated that the boys have been unusually successful in pushing themselves into the line of action.
Most phenomenal of all is the close association and spirit of camaraderie which has been preserved among the members of the class. Tell me, someone, if I'm wrong, but I feel it can safely be said, for instance, that '34 is the only young class which can boast a monthly New York dinner with large attendance, and that without any more ballyhoo than a routine postcard.
And now (I really wasn't working up to this) the only thing left for the current season is to give a bit of consideration to the Alumni Fund and see whether we can present the College with a reasonable number of subscriptions, say some modest proportion, like 90%. Most of us little realize the importance of this source of revenue to the College. If we could all hear Prexy tell about it as he has at the class agents' luncheons, there would be a great many more of us giving it a second thought, despite close proximity of our well-known wolf friend to the door. My own private suggestion is that you (1) pardon the writer for eating up space in this serious-toned fashion, (2) dive through the mail and carefully peruse the Fund material, (3) forget about it, if you think you ought to.
Spring cleaning in the secretarial scandal files brings to light enough copy to barge through the back cover of this periodical. Among those things that happen even in the best of families are the brief but proud stories of our latest fathers. Herb Heston claims the fastest work by any pair married after graduation (the statistical department will shortly look into this) .... the arrival of Eleanor Heston, on April 11. "Still in thewool business," adds this latest of the demons, "and about to become a Philadelphia merchant." But close on the heels of this occurrence comes the announcement from Hinsdale, Ill., of the appearance on the scene of Edwin Ruthven Moore Ill, a mighty name for so small a chap.
Just too late for the May issue came a letter, signed over the title of sales manager, the Commercial Service Bureau, Inc., of Boston, and requesting the insertion of the following, which, if it is not too late may be more interesting than news to some good '34 job-seeker. "WANTED: A GOODDARTMOUTH MAN. To assist salesmanager for old established concern, insoliciting accounts for collection. Leadsfurnished. See Mr. Allan Bennett for interview, 9-10 A.M. daily, Room 44, 120Milk St."
One of the Chicago lads, who fears brickbats more than he loves bouquets and hence requests that what follows remain anonymous, reports that .... Swede Lindstrom is losing a lot of money for the suckers who put their money in the First National Bank and a lot of sleep over a blond job down the street .... Jack Fogarty goes to the south side for his entertainment .... Tommy Beers is in one of the Donnelly concerns and Cogs is at the other when he's not looking for home talent as he did in Hanover .... Johnny Spiegel and Bob Engelman spend their time taking nice young girls to burlesque shows. (That's the seventeenth nasty thing that's been said about Engelman in these columns .... Well, Walker says a sheet's no good if it doesn't have a dozen libel suits on its hands) .... Jocko Stangle is winning a lot of beer from some of the boys when they bowl once a week .... Terhune is throwing caterpillar tractors around in Peoria, and also the same old stuff in the same place . . . . Colonel Hess commutes between Chicago and Indiana and probably had a hand in the recent U. of C. communistic fracas .... Bill Embry has been spending a lot of time at his old haunt, Pine Manor .... and Jim Cowan practically lives at Wellesley
With true reportorial instinct Van Thorne, latest cub addition to the New York Times, answers the question that many have been asking: "Where is BobMiller?" "I see by the sports pages," writes Van, "that Jake Ruppert got aholdof Bob and farmed him out to the NewarkBears. Last Sunday (April 7 to you) theBoston Braves paid a call at Newark, andour erstwhile star hurler was called uponto face Babe Ruth. I think if you askedBob he would say that Ruth was still themighty Babe of old. Because, according tothe Times reporter at the game, the Babelet a couple of Bob's pitches go by andthen hit one on the nose for a home rundrive of over 500 feet, the longest homerever hit at Ruppert Stadium and one ofthe longest the Babe ever hit. Nevertheless,Bob must be doing well to be with theBears. That's where Red Rolfe made hisfinal take-off for a regular job with theYankees; and maybe we'll soon see another Dartmouth man with the New YorkA mericans."
Van himself has had what he admits they call a "checkered career." After coming home from Russia and the rest of Europe and hanging around in the fall long enough to get up to Hanover a couple of times, he started to work with a film production house, which he left to work with the "oft-questioned but fundamentally honest" New York Home Relief Bureau. From which he retired from being an investigator, to become a reporter on the Times, which gives him a good appetite and even a salary.
Dick Wells is optimistic about rubber. Some day, he says, it will stop stretching, but by that time everything will be covvered with it. Wells, in his epistle cheerfully designed to pull the Secretary out of the Slough of Despond (see April issue for Slough), admits employment with the United States Rubber Products, Inc., in the sociological feeding ground of Passaic, N. J. As a major in Socy, Dick finds some interest in the problems of that little burg, but decides he must keep his mind on the job in hand and leave the clean-up project until the million mark is passed. Other Wellsian news includes the facts that . Howie Gussenhoven is battlinglike hell to keep General Motors ontheir several feet .... Dick Houck, oneof the plugging Harvard business men,carries himself in true Boston fashion..... This place at Harvard can't be sohard after all. I expected to see shadows,but the boys carry good firm flesh, well,flesh anyway .... Sam McCray maystill be in China and Japan. He had thedistinction of being one to climb thatworld-renowned peak—my Japanese notbeing too good, this will only be a try-FUJIYAMA, in the middle of winter.... Bill Ramsey struck some part inChina an hour after Sam had left it forShanghai .... Don Bunting has founda nook as a research chemist with JohnsManville in Somerville, N.J BobWilliamson is pining for a girl in the East
May the following kindle the flame of adventure in our sluggish hearts! This is where your correspondent begins to wish there were a July issue of this sheet. From Curt Howard:
"I have been meaning to write—wasplanning to write you from Hong Kong orsomewhere, just to make it a little sensational, but clattering a typewriter in theglory hole of a steamship has its difficulties, and besides they have too manyChinamen in Hong Kong to allow anyserenity of mind. I can tell you though,that Hanover seems a vision-like and wonderful place when viewed from the otherhemisphere. You keep remembering snowwith bluish shadows in it and roundedhills and Prof. Lambuth blandly struttingalong through his other-world cloud ofwell-being.
TRAVELOGUE
"Was in Hong Kong, among many otherplaces, last summer, when I was workingon a round-the-world Dollar Liner ....a sleepy, pleasant old scow that lumberedin a comfortable trance, at a substantialthirteen knots, through typhoons, trades,and doldrums. However, she managed tocover 26,000 miles and rub her prosaicnose against the docks of twenty-six portsbetween New York and New York, all inthe space of three and a half months. Youcan't write a travelogue about all that ina letter like this, so I won't try.
"Suffice it that Hawaii is a paradise morelovely than any mortal deserves, a luxuriant blur of sun and violet sky and whitesand and palm trees and pineapples andsuperb native maidens .... Japan acountry of eager children in their firstshell-rimmed glasses and of cosy littlesukiaki houses (all right, sukiaki is a food!) with dainty, full-lipped damselsto serve you .... and more if you like.... and wisteria and magnolia and agrowing canker of Americanism ....China a kaleidoscope of junks and rikshasand joss-houses and screeching tramcarsand rivet guns and swarming hordes ofChinamen and pith-helmeted Englishmenin khaki shorts—a vague memory of mecareetiing through the streets of Shanghaipulling a riksha with a half-crazed Chinaman in the seat—a vague notion of silentwarfare between the old world and thenew—all to an accompaniment of rattlingmah jong pieces in the upper stories ofthe houses, with the faint odor of sandalwood, somewhere
"Singapore a vast city stretching outinto the jungle, full of people from everypart of the world—the Britisher, the beachcomber, tall handsome Malayans withsplendid eyes and moustaches and a mocking contempt for the white race, chewingbetel nut; Germans, Dutch, French, Cingalese, Burmese, Javanese .... and overall a terrible sun by day and white moonlight by night. Saw much of this over thetop of a tall, cold gin-sling, the mostbeautiful drink on earth .... Bombaya sewer of inconceivable filth and poverty,with people sleeping on the sidewalkseverywhere, curled up with mangy streetdogs for warmth, for the nights are cold.... and occasionally a building, a park,or a vista of great beauty. Grant Road isin Bombay, surely the vilest spot on earth,where the girls beckon at you from barredcages on either side, and do not look muchout of place. Rats scuttle in the dustabout your feet, and emaciated childrenfollow you moaning, 'No mamma, nopapa, no chow-chow' in an endless, saddening wail
"Port Said and Alexandria, sea-porttowns, leering, vicious, and dirty, withlong-eared Egyptians in tarboushes andstripped shirts with the tails hanging out,ready to sell you anything from theirwives to a herd of camels, at whateverprice you may beat them down to. Alonein the early morning in Port Said we discovered that we had bought a broken-down hack-horse for eight shillings-butcouldn't get him on the ship, so gave himto a little boy who didn't want him much
"Then through the wine-dark Mediterranean to Naples, where they have Vesuvius, of course, and the beautiful bay, andmany soldiers, and a silent fear of II Duceand much too much red wine and verybeautiful women. Spent the woefulest dayof my life sailing up the coast to Genoa.That Chianti is a terrible wineGenoa very business-like and prosperous,a merchants' ceyiter, with beautiful shop'sfor lace and angora wool and tooledleather; the women Browningesque, darkand blithe, with roving eyes. No wonderthey have a population problem. Nearlyjumped ship there .... Then outthrough the Pillars of Hercules (there'sno Prudential sign on Gibraltar, all a fake),and into the howling Atlantic, underwater most of the way across . ... toNew York "
Getting back to us stick-in-the-muds .... Bob Brown gets mired up in the inkpots of Ithaca, attending, to make myself more clear, the Empire State School of Printing, and getting a mechanical background for future newspaper work. The curriculum would read something like this: Typesetting 3 and 4; Press Running 58; Linotype 13-A; and Grease, Ink, and Hot Lead Dabbling 34. Looking ahead a year, which is more than most of us can do, Bob says he will be with the Trenton (N. J.) Times. Frank Heath and Bill Sheffield, he says, are at Cornell Law, hard by, but their course of study includes a lot of beer .... Walt Bryant is still at Amherst studying to be a gentleman farmer.
WILMOT ALSO TRAVELS
Robert Eck Wilmot, not to be outdone in the travelogue line, decided he had one and would offer it. "Perhaps I have notbeen climbing any Matterhorns," he apologizes, "or swimming in any TajMahal pools, but .... and here I beginmy story."
"From ye little towne of Bethlehem(where the best beer in the world is sold)I skipped off one fine day in October toseek my fortune and to find out how thestuff they put in bridges and hairpins ismade—ah! the romance of it all. In Bethlehem there was Bill Cummings, a sprightlylad with as fine a developed right elbowas has ever been seen. Bill is taking somecourses at Lehigh so that he may becomemore proficient in tapping rocks. Oh! thegeologist and gold miner in me!
"Washington was a nightmare withMaury O'Connor. He is studying law atnight at George Washington and tracking,down criminals in the Department of Investigation during the day. That weekend will never be forgotten for any number of reasons. (Maury moved to anotherplace the next week . . . . I couldn't saywhy-)
"Philadelphia, while full of Yales andPenns, revealed old George Ham, ex-'34,who is doing a bit of med-schooling.Lebanon (Pa.) brought forth old manRandy Klinefelter, who is pestering thefarmers in the interests of Prudential LifeInsurance Co.
"Met Mrs. Louis Armstrong in Buffalo,and while I don't remember her being inour class she surely shakes a mean baton(is that it, Eck?) at the Vendome in that-city. We had quite a chat with her, and I'msure our musician friend and pinch-hitting scribe Scherman would have liked tohear her tell how she and Louie makethose trumpets work.
"Here is my one grievance. Everywhere/go people say,"Oh have you seen thatDartmouth short in the movies?' My answer, 'Yes.' 'Don't those fellows go faston the skis, though?' 'Yes.' 'Wasn't thatfellow who skated the wrong way in therace funny?' Yes.' That's OK, I can holdout up to that point. But when they askme if I know the funny fellow, I try tochange the subject to the weather or anything else. But they are persistent and Imust hang my head in shame and say inmumbling tones: 'He is in my class.' Cogswell, you will rue the day.
"Really had an interesting few months,at all of our plants. The experience was invaluable. Even managed to get in onthings and did everything from shovelingcoal in a soft coal mine to running anoverhead crane. Now I am in the structural sales department and hope to go onthe road pretty soon. Does anybody wantto buy a bridge?"
Dick Fowle sends word that he and Francis Dame, at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Medford, Mass., are expectant recipients of the coveted M.A. in those subjects. Dick mentions that Charlie Orvis is making real progress at the Vermont Sanitarium, Pittsford, Vt., and would appreciate some letters.
Link Daniels has resigned his position with the Equitable Paper Bag Co. and doesn't know quite what he will be up to next, except that he appears to be mentally mapping several trips to Hanover. He hopes there will be something like an informal first year reunion. So may it be. Other news from the Daniels corner: Don Moir is working like the renowned Trojan for exams at Columbia and is throwing over the idea of teaching to go into business.
Paul Ebbitt, one of our few Rhode Islanders, is leading a monastic lite, he says, for the simple reason that he hasn't made a cent. But working as student teacher in English at Newport High, he likes the racket and is doing well. Quote: "I am acquiring a fine scholarly stoop andI hug my battered brief case to my heartas I dodder to and from classes with areal Johnny Poor attitude. Like old ChipsI nod absentmindedly to my little brats,and even the more mature senior girlshave ceased to disconcert my coldly professional glance . ... I pray nightly foran appointment."
Ed Kaiser, from the seat of learning of an assistantship in geology, spends a good single-spaced page boasting about Syracuse's cheap food, the 25c movie rate, railroad tracks on Main St., and the largest collection of deans east of Chicago. Other than that he ventures that Herb Hawkes' work in the Siscoe Gold Mines, Quebec, seems to be quite unconnected with the recent demise of that outfit's president.
The engagement of H. B. Brown, of pipe-smoking fame, to Miss Hazel Rees of Arlington has just come through to us. Plans are indefinite until such a time as the New Hampshire political football is grounded and the Industrial School knows how the budget stands. While chasing runaways over the N. H. landscape, Brownie frequently runs into El Fulton and Hafey Arthur at Tilton .... Hafey has the ball club in hand this spring .... Nick Xantacky has a very good job at the Manchester relief office .... Bob Layzell, salesman of sorts, is often seen on the golf course .... Phipps Cole is an auditor in the Brown Co. offices in Berlin, N. H Jack Hallenbeck is about the only lad not heretofore reported at Harvard Law.
Harry Wallace, seen on lower Broadway with a mad grin on his face and a white carnation in his lapel, reports the recent marriage of John Cheney in Manchester.
The National Institution of Public Affairs, in the nation's capital, houses Luke Wilson, who has a few items to ofEer. Mostly that Ed Hilton is to be married June 24 in Chicago to Miss Charme Lee Howard. But also that Goose Goss is repossessing cars for GMAC, an adventurous pastime, and played basketball all winter with a local team that won the Washington amateur title. Luke is contemplating a European trip this summer.
And if any of you travelers have your eyes turned towards Europe for this summer, drop me a line and maybe we could take in a museum or two together.
And that, said John, is that .... for the current year. A little bit of scribbling during the summer months would be much appreciated. Good luck.
Secretary, 193 Brookdale Ave., New Rochelle, N. Y
