Class of 1893
The day before this batch of copy was due was a lucky day for the Class Secretary. The morning mail brought him good letters from Selden and McKay; President Cox dropped in for a half hour; and R. Choate Baker was encountered on the street for the first time in months.
Rufus announced that the class baby, Professor Perley Baker of Norwich University, was convalescing from an appendectomy, in which he had better luck than his brother, Bradley, who had a tough time with his appendix a while ago. The youngest son, John, graduate of the University of New Hampshire last June, has had the good fortune to land a job in his home town.
Guy is working hard, attending and addressing regional meetings of representatives of the great company which he now heads, but week-ends at Chichester Brook Farm keep him in shape, The Farm suffered in the March floods to the extent that its rearing pool was carried away and a lot of fine trout distributed over the Merrimack valley. By the way, we wonder how Billy Jarvis got out of that Pittsburgh flood, which was contemporaneous with our New Hampshire over-supply of water.
McKay's children are even more widely distributed than Cox's trout, one in New York City, one in Pittsburgh, one in Minnesota, and one in Athens, Greece; with a total of six grandchildren to give him the class championship in that regard, to date. Mac writes that he has had his troubles with the Depression, like all the rest of us, bus is blessed with perfect health, which enables him to retain his form in competitive golf as well as in contract bridge.
Selden, another of the hale and hearty group, gives the credit for his good health to his adherence to a plan for retiring gradually from business, beginning at age fifty. He has written ten books, one of them in collaboration with the late Senator Burton, has engaged in some successful promotions, and is still an officer of the 418 Central Park West corporation, which certainly has a right smart location.
The Secretary wrote Selden a while ago, asking for an expert opinion on the depression, and the reply he received was most interesting, as a few quoted sentences will show: "There were two principalcauses of the depression. One "was cupidity,everybody trying to get rich by putting upprices on everybody else, so that one halfof our wealth was imaginary Theother cause was the failure of social controlsto keep pace with mechanical progress.. ... It takes longer to speed up humanbeings than to speed up machines. The machines are all right, but we can't keep upwith them As to immediate prospects, I have no idea that our recovery willbe uninterrupted. Taxation will put a bigcrimp in us, and the foreign trade outlookis decidedly dubious But this is agreat country, as you may have heard before, and I believe that we shall work outof our troubles without a Mussolini."
And, to place beside Selden's vivid prose, we have this month a smooth translation by Professor Perley Oakland Place of the poem, "Eternal Rome," by Claudius Rutilius Namatianus, 416 A.D., beginning
"Beyond thy kingdom shines thy fadelessfame;Thy splendid deeds surpass thy destiny."
Secretary, 104 No. State St., Concord, N. H.
