Class of 1902

A Happy New Year to you! It is a privilege to use both the academic calendar and the customary kind, so that we can have such a greeting twice a year. And now, fresh from summer vacations or whatever changes the warm weather has brought us, we are to resume our contacts with at least one of our other worlds. For really we do live in more than one, some of us blend the different phases of our' lives in a delightful fashion, while to others the world of childhood friends, the sphere of college acquaintances, and the realm of present family and business connections are widely separated, so remote in some instances that it would be not easy to place one's old roommate in the current surroundings. Still it is a privilege to break down those artificial or spatial boundaries in the hope of making life richer.

I wonder sometimes how much you think about this magazine and about our own columns. The magazine is the child of the Secretaries Association, and the allotment of space for individual class use is a very difficult problem. No one class should have more than its share, but what is that share? In some way it is related to the size of the class, and one suspects that it is also related to the use that is made of it. Here then is a place to voice our creed: with due regard for others, may we always so act as to make our part serve the best interests of the class and those of the magazine as a whole.

Now what has happened since my last letter appeared? That is what we all want to know, and since my returns haven't begun to come in at the date this is written, I can only give the few odd items that have trickled in during the summer. Of course, I haven't told you about my visit to Hanover in May, though you read the formal report in the June number. This visit has to be quite a brief one for me, in fact I was in Hanover about twenty-four hours, and since I am not much of a gossip, not everything came my way.

Still I did see Bill Murray, who hasn't changed enough in years to worry about. Bill is still doing the language stuff for the Tuck School children, but to me he is a professor of Common Sense Philosophy. In other words, "If you haven't chatted with Bill Murray, you haven't seen Hanover."

Then I had a visit with Mose Perkins, who stands as firm and straight as of yore, though I guess he pushes down on the ground a little harder than he did some years ago, but being a grandfather he is entitled to that. My biggest surprise was to find at the Inn, just before I left, one Billy Merrill, the genial Bane. Billy is still so much like the chap we knew in college that somehow I found it a little odd to realize that this was really Father Merrill come up to Hanover with Mother Merrill to see the freshman son, who, by the way, is a worthy young man. Of course you see that I was getting some of my artificial boundaries broken down.

Perhaps the change which will hit you the hardest when next you visit Hanover is the disappearance of the Ledyard bridge. "Stevie" Stevens '01 took Ned Burbeck '03 and me to the old site, and it seemed al- most a case of improving your house lot by cutting down all the trees. We also went up to see the new Lake, and this time I felt better. The longer we live the more of Hanover is being discovered.

Of course you noticed the cheering item which indicates,—well you can tell as well as I what it means. Our percentage of contributors to the Alumni Fund a year ago was 42, and in the campaign just closed it was about 55. I wish you could realize how many colleges today are wishing that their alumni would be so wholehearted in their continued support.

So far as I am personally concerned the big item of the summer was the return of my daughter Alice from her year of study in Germany. I don't know that any of you have been concerned about her, but she returned in fine physical condition and with an enthusiastic story of the treatment she received. Her impressions gained at first hand seem to be quite different from those I have gleaned from newspaper accounts. However this is hardly the place for going into great detail. Alice made the acquaintance of Bob Goodell's son Robert while they were both in Munich.

I hope this doesn't start anything which can't be finished, but an incident of house- cleaning brought up a point of interest. "Do you still want to keep these old books?" On looking over the lot (you see I kept most of my college textbooks), I found some which seemed to merit consideration on the score of human interest alone. What should I do with a book inscribed consecutively, S. E. Moody '98, A. D. Wiggin '99, W. H. Fletcher '00, H. W. Farwell '02? Of course some of you fellows never bought any books, and some of you sold them as fast as you could, nevertheless it would seem that a good old book might tell a very exciting tale if it could only talk. And considering the names in that book of mine, what a humdrum existence its later life in my attic has been compared with the glamour of its early youth.

Next month we'll start on those individual returns, and here's hoping that I don't have to pay any more bets to my daughter for being too optimistic about the number of my classmates who will answer my letter.

Secretary, 130 Woodridge Place, Leonia, N. J.