Class of 1897
George Lewis planned to be with us at the June Reunion, but was detained by a serious hospital experience. He has now reported that he has made a good recovery and plans with Mrs, Lewis, a son, and a daughter to visit Hanover and tour New England next summer. Reunions with classmates are being planned.
Alley was recently visited in New Hampshire by Rowe and Thyng. Alley has sold his store and is custodian of a golf course. He has a Dartmouth son and a University of New Hampshire daughter. He said that this was the first visit from classmates in 43 years.
Semp C. Smith recently spent a month at a California hospital. Nothing serious but a general tuning up for another decade.
LIMITED ON THE NORTH
In 1893-1897 Hanover ended very abruptly at the north. You could go in this direction on Main St. to the New Hospital and on College St. to the Medical School without incident. It is not to be supposed that guides were needed beyond these points. Farmers drove in from Lyme and other remote places, but there was nothing of interest to most college students beyond the village limits. It was in fact a firm belief that Dartmouth was most unfortunately located. The winters were beyond endurance and were preceded and followed by dust and mud. So the students drank, swore, argued interminably, and grew fat.
The river was always an attraction. From its banks we watched the floating logs and the skilled rivermen. We skated when ice would permit from Ely to Olcott Falls. We swam much and often. It is to be recorded that the first bathing suit in Hanover was Morrill's, a gift from his mother, sent to him from Cincinnati, but he never used it. Our swimming was quite social. We swam in groups, for we knew the tragedies of the river and most of us could read our Odysseys but could not swim.
Mosher could swim, for his father owned a mill pond, and he displayed his skill by swimming out to a floating and very gummy spruce log. He reached it easily, but left it painfully for he was a hairy boy.
Rowe, the long-limbed; Bolser, the deepchested; and Heald who knew the trees by name and never mistook an Americanus Ulmus for a slippery elm, would occasionally join for a wearisome walk of perhaps three miles. Church was required; for the well brought up class meeting followed and then a depressing Sunday dinner. After this we could not walk far and get back in time for supper, nor could we miss supper for it was paid for.
A northern walk always brought out tales of the Christy Warden murder case. We knew the spot by the brook where the body was found. We peered at the bullet-ridden Warden barn from which the murderer was taken. We saw the corn field where hidden, the amateur detective George H. Whitcher solved the mystery of the crime and though a college student was later rewarded by a ticket and a free trip to the execution. We heard of Chuck Emerson's speech by which he dissuaded a lynch-in-clined mob.
When we reached the "stock farm," we were leg-weary, and watched with interest the placid cows. Through this field Type Hitchcock, a great scientist and a true teacher, was leading Bailey, Maurice Brown, and other geological stars. The professor bumped into a bewildered cow. He adjusted his glasses, gave one analyzing stare, and raised his derby with the words, "Excuse me, madam." He was a perfect gentleman among the ladies.
One Sunday I escaped church. Monitor John Poor could not be bribed but he was open to reasonable explanations, and I walked the track for a Sunday dinner at the Ompompanoosuc home of my roommate, Warren Kendall '99. It was a gracious home. In the afternoon we walked along the roads, and for the first time, I saw and wrote home about an unchurched village. Some few men were working in the field. This was of course a recognized sin, but others were sitting at their front doors doing nothing, and this was worse than any sin. I was perfectly shocked and at the next Y. M. C. A. meeting requested that all join in singing that hymn of Puritan culture, "Work for the Night Is Coming."
There was a more distant and somewhat legendary north shown on state maps, and, filled with a missionary spirit, Marshall ministered to a congregation in Piermont each Sunday, and there are town fathers who today recall the success of the brilliant young preacher. We also knew that there was a St. Johnsbury Academy to which prosperous Vermont farmers sent their sons to be polished and aristocratic Bostonian families sent their sons to be rusticated before entrance at Dartmouth. So we gained from one source Semp Smith and Ward, and from the other source, Marshall and O'Malley. Over this academy presided Professor Putney, and he kept a school record of the souls of his pupils with supplementary notes on their academic achievements.
Secretary, State Capitol, Hartford, Conn.
