Class of 1878
Vittum is reported in good health, and enjoys attending the clubs and associations he always has, but both his eyes and his memory are failing. He can read only a little, which is a sore trial for one who has always been a great reader. He keeps up with current affairs and with political news with the aid of that younger sister whose serious illness called him home in freshman year:, and who, since the death of his wife thirty-five years ago has been his companion, and has, as he says, given him good advice. She is now eyes for him. They still plan to visit Sandwich, N. H., their native town, as often as every second summer, as they have done for many years.
Mr. and Mrs. John Cameron Gray announce the marriage of their daughter, Mabelle Elizabeth, on December 26, to Mr. Elliott Holbrook Rice. The couple will reside in Chicopee Falls, Mass., as do the Grays. Members of the class, and especially their wives who were present at our fifty-fifth and who remember the helpful part Miss Gray took in making that occasion enjoyable and memorable for us old folks, will extend their cordial best wishes.
B. A. Field of Watertown, N. Y., says work and activity keep him well, and he plans to attend our sixtieth in 1938. He is at his office from 8:30 to 5:30 with time out for noon lunch. His oldest daughter, Nellie, mainstay in the home, drives him to and fro twice a day. Of his two sons, William T., who was with him at last reunion, is a consulting engineer employed by municipal corporations, water and sewer systems, etc. Brayton W. has been for many years with the Westinghouse Electric at South Philadelphia. His younger daughter, Irene A., is the wife of Verne A. Fogg of Ithaca, who is with the Grange League Federation, a large cooperative concern dealing mainly in articles for farmers' use. He sees even the more distant of his four children and seven grandchildren at least twice a year.
The Secretary had an interesting call recently from Harold S. Maxson and his son, now a sophomore at Amherst, son and grandson of Dr. Orrin P. Maxson, recently deceased. Mr. Maxson hopes to call upon others of his father's old friends as his business takes him into their vicinity.
After a perennial series of physical upsettals and readjustments that should make his cadaver of interest to medical science, Parkinson finds himself surprisingly agile for his years, and relies confidently upon his own knee-action for locomotion over distances for which his neighbors, young and old, resort to the modern type that insures easy wheeling. He begins to fear that his legs will outlast his head. This calls to mind the entertainment given in the College Church in the late seventies by the redoubtable Barnaby (How many of you remember it?), the final feature of which was his ballad of the man who designed for his own use a too automatic artificial leg. Once the leg got started it refused to stop and led the inventor through unlimited vicissitudes of which Barnaby with mournful visage sang through verse after verse, keeping time in a kind of dance or hop upon one of his long but astonishingly nimble legs while holding with both hands to its runaway mate which kept kicking impatiently out in front, until in the midst of the last line he stopped suddenly as if all out of breath, but as suddenly resumed, as indicated by the latter half of the line:
"He died! But the leg it went on the sameas before, ri-tn-ri-lu, ri-lu-ri-lu, ri-tuli-ri-lu-ri-lu."
Odd, isn't it, how the memory of such a scene will cause a cramp in a man's cheeks sixty years after.
Secretary, 331 Highland Ave., Fitchburg, Mass.
