Letters to the Editor

Cyclist Named

To the Editor:

The bicycle rider on the extreme left on page 6, March edition, greatly resembles "Lame" Abbott who, if I recall correctly, entered College, dropped out for a year or more because of an accident, and returned and graduated with '92. I wouldn't gamble a nickel on it but the pose is his and the features resemble him.

He was a big fellow, played varsity football in '89 and '91, won the 16 pound hammer in '89 and '90, and in spite of his lameness won the high jump in '92. I recall that he had ridden a "high wheel" and even aspired to the pole vault. All together his athletic performances were most remarkable, considering his physical handicap.

His pose, at ease, on the football field was much the same as appears in the picture.

Boston Dinners Largest

To the Editor:

Your editorial standards are so high that on the rare occasions, when an error of fact creeps into the MAGAZINE, you are willing, I feel certain, to have it called to your attention, in the interests of historical accuracy.

In the April issue, page 24, last paragraph, reference is made to President Hopkins' speaking before the New York Alumni, "where nearly 750 Dartmouth men were present for perhaps the largest alumni dinner in the history of the College."

My recollection is that at the dinner of the Boston Alumni, January, 1913, we had our largest attendance. The March, 1913, issue of the MAGAZINE, page 160, gives the number as 868. Professor Charles F. Richardson (known as "Clothespin" to many generations of Dartmouth men) after his retirement, made his home in Boston. He was one of the 868 and was elected president of the Association for the following year. In accepting the election, he urged that we all strive to have the attendance at least 1000, at the meeting in January, 1914. Alas, he died October 8, 1913, and the attendance at the next dinner was only 750 (March, 1914, MAGAZINE page 197). One of the speakers at this dinner was "Ernest M. Hopkins '01, president of the Alumni Council, (who) dwelt on the duty of college to train for citizenship." In January, 1915, attendance was 810.

We salute our brethren in New York. They turned out in greater numbers for their dinner this year than we did for ours. We hope they will have an even larger attendance next year. We hope also to establish in Boston a new high in 1938.

87 Milk St.,Boston, Mass.,April 6, 1937.

We Like the Verse Too

To the Editor:

I hesitate to be the one to bring this rhyme to your attention, but if it is to be done, there's no one else to do it. Just now I ran across it among some long-undisturbed papers, set to music for four-part male voices by Walter Golde '10, on a single hand-written sheet just as it came to me from him ten years ago. Actually, I have never yet heard it sung or played but I understand its one and only public rendition, so far as I know, won some sort of a silver cup for the Gamma Delta Chi Glee Club in some inter-fraternity glee contest during the winter of 1926-27 when I was requested to furnish some sort of a songlyric for that special occasion.

Just now, coming across it again, the thought occurred to me that, with alumni reunions coming along .... say nothing °f the Alumni Fund campaign . . . . there might be a use for this brief bit, not as a song, but as verse which, rather solemnly perhaps, says little but attempts to suggest much between a dozen brief lines.

Perhaps, to be sure, I should give you a blueprint of what I mean, trusting you to drop the business right here if you think these lines fail to conjure up some such suggestion without any such Browningclass interpretation. My original object was to capture and convey only fragmentary suggestion of what's at the core of this mysterious reality called "Dartmouth Spirit." Hence, the carefree cordiality of a prep school boy's reception as a stranger on the Hanover scene, the growing solidarity and significance of friendships and affection for what the name "Dartmouth" comes to mean during undergraduate days, and the continuing mutuality of interest and enthusiasm among Dartmouth men through the lengthening years of the alumni-phase (which, after all, is the real seven-day wonder that lends a sort of heraldic distinction to the men of Hanover in the public eye among all the other college clans) .... hence, as I started to say a mile back, the attempt was made to suggest something of that, concerning the three basic phases of Dartmouth life, in these three stanzas:—

The Dartmouth Spirit Lad o' the world, here's a hand in thine! Feel you its warmth and be glad. Greet you the world with a hail—hail—hail; Brother o' mine—my lad!

Pal o' my heart, here's a hand in thine! Strength to thy strength I bestow. Gird on this buckler of Brotherhood; You will go far—l know.

Banish the years—here's a hand in thine! Turn back the sands e'er they drain. Speak not the word of a long farewell; You will return—again!

Maybe it's just the sentimental mesmerism of our local preparations for 1912's TWENTY-FIFTH in June that makes all this seem so plausible again. I admit this has the solemn earmarks of a hymntune but, in spite of all the fun we have and the noise we make, there's something mighty serious in anything that stirs a man's emotional and individual loyalties from boyhood to the end of his days, as I watched it give its "lift" to my Father's enthusiasms for everything concerning Dartmouth and the class of '85.

You don't suppose, by any chance, I'm getting to be just a typical "old grad," do you? Come to think of it, I certainly thought he was when I was a sophomore and he came back to Hanover for his BIG TWENTY-FIFTH.

Anyhow, I think the new John Ledyard lyric, published in one of your recent issues, is what we might call a "needed" addition to the folklore of Dartmouth song and story. If it has the good fortune to be wedded to the right music, it will ride right along with Eleazar for many a campus generation. It has "swing" enough right now so that the ultimate tune is practically half written already. And, having gone thus far, I'd like to do what I'm prompted to do every time a new issue comes out—and lay a gardenia at your door for the job you and the whole staff are doing with DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE.

219 Park Drive,Boston, Mass.,