A Century's Span
WHAT A HOST of recollections these reunions at Commencement bring. What a myriad of feelings come rushing into the heart at the sight of so many familiar faces. And it is a curious thing that no matter how much the faces may have changed, one sees them always as they were on the graduation day so many years ago. It is another curious circumstance how little rank or wealth or elevated position enter into the relations among members of classes. Often times the old campus leaders may still play the leading roles. The reunion becomes a reflection of those old times when that little artificial world which exists on the campus is recreated and brought into living existence again.
And how these reunions cross the years. For example the class of 1885 comes back this year for its Fiftieth. There is a half century span at once. But the members of the class of 1885 no doubt remember that on their graduation day, the class of 1835 held its Fiftieth reunion. Some of the reuning classmen may even remember what the fifty-year men said on that date, and it is not impossible that some member of the class of 1835 passed on to some youth in the class of 1885 his remembrances of his own graduation, and how the class of 1785 held its fiftieth reunion at that time. In fact it is more than probable that such matters were discussed and talked about, and if a member of the class of 1885 remembers how 1835 talked of 1785 there is an almost unbroken chain of living remembrance to the days when there was still much unbroken forest, when the country was new and experimental, when the Dartmouth of today was in the building and the echoes of the Revolution were still flying about.
It was a Mr. Gray of Dartmouth's first graduating class who came back, when an old man, in the Twenties or Thirties, and pointed out where the old buildings had been, the first hall, the student huts, the main building which occupied that place on the southeast corner of the present campus, a place marked until our times by a depression in the ground. That story went into the records, it became a valuable part of the history of the College; and in like fashion the stories of old days brought back by alumni get into class reports, eventually into histories and articles, and thus the splendid tradition of an institution is built up and perpetuated.
Dartmouth is rich in its legends, history, and traditions, and each reuning class makes that record even richer. For the man who cannot attend there is a distinct loss in experience and emotion, and as one of the fifty-year men put it a year or two ago for those who do attend "one's youth comes back." No person who has ever attended one of the later reunions of his class will ever forget the faces or the emotions or the experiences.
