From a 1908 Mem Book
TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS ago the 20th of this month, according to the notation on the negative from which the photograph before you was produced, the Dartmouths were naively amusing themselves with Lock Ness monsters of the type indicated. The occasion was the Junior Prom staged by 1909 in 1908's best Springtime. Newspaper accounts, meagre in everything except adjectives, fail to identify the 12-legged affair or the beast the other side of the platform. The scene was Alumni Oval, now Memorial Field. The Springfield Union, in a special dispatch dated Hanover, May 20th, shed the following light on the situation: "Tonight the second dayof junior prom, week festivities at Dartmouth came to a close, with two of thebest and most original efforts in the line ofentertainment that a prom, committee hasever offered the College. These were thesociety circus and the original comic opera,'The Promenaders.' The circus is the firstthing of the kind that was ever attemptedat Hanover and the management wentinto it on a large scale. 'The Promenaders'is the third opera written by a Dartmouthundergraduate for a prom, and it is unquestionably the best.
"The circus arrived in Hanover thismorning and pitched its tents on AlumniOval. This noon a monster street paradewas given and the streets were lined withprom, guests and gaping collegians whostared in wonder at the many monstrosities,the wonderful menagerie, the gaily cladperformers. Promptly at 2:30 this afternoon the great gate of the oval was thrownopen and the surging crowd swept into thewonderland of canvas. From the gate across
the oval to the football gridiron stretchedthe midway with its lemonade stands, itsbarkers, its flaring signs and its sideshows,all just as they should be and are in a realcircus. On the gridiron was pitched the bigtent, an unroofed affair, consisting of asemi-circular area of seats facing a largecanvas wall.
"The midway was a marvel of showland. Pink lemonade flowed like water andpeanuts and popcorn were as plentiful asthe manna of the Hebrews. Such monstrosities as Kiko, the wild man, a beastthat lives only on raw meat and fish andhas the strength of ten horses; Osborne, thewizard of black magic; and Signor di Castilla and his troupe of trained lions wereonly a few of the many marvelous and impossible attractions, that 'the pike' offeredits patrons."
"Bunk" Irwin '09, who had recently come on from the University of Illinois, was general manager of the circus and Emmet Hay Naylor '09 was the ring master. Among the fraternity exhibits which received newspaper mention was D. K. E., with a sixlegged dragon; S. A. E., with a performing elephant; Phi Kappa Psi with an Ostrich elephant; Kappa Sigma with a performing bird-fish.
The presentation had its acrobats who included Erastus Beethoven Badger and J. A. Norton of the then current senior crop.
And John Bowler the Elder had a finger and his historic derby hat in the picture. He was "judge of the animals and looked after their physical well-being." "The Promenaders" will be gone over a bit in the next appearance of this flash from the mill-wheel era of collegism.
