Class of 1897
Edward P. Bailey, head of the department of science in the Brockton High School, has fully recovered health, strength, and vigor. At a recent conference of teachers, he heard the Class Secretary lecture for an hour with only occasional signs of weariness.
Benjamin T. Marshall, for some months, will be acting pastor of the State St. Congregational church in Portland, Me.
Murray W. Gordon came to Dartmouth from Franconia. After a year he transferred to Brown University, and there obtained his degree. For some years, he has been living in Rochester, N. H., where he conducts a printing business.
George Ernest Foss, a most successful and active man of business, is secretary of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce. Recently, he has visited his mother in Pittsfield, N. H., and his sister in West Hartford, Conn.
THERE WAS MORE TO THE EASTWARD
In 1893 to 1897, to the adventurous, the East offered the best opportunity. Immediately at hand was the college farm. It served to recall the failure of the attempt to harmonize agriculture and a classical curriculum.
In 1891, when the unhallowed union was still in existence, President Bartlett, an uncompromising classicist, read in morning chapel the great declaration of the son of Sirach when he asked, "Howcan he get wisdom that holdeth the plow,that driveth oxen, and is occupied intheir labors?" The agricultural students were mad clear through. They had never heard this chapter. They searched their Baptist Bibles through, but could not find it, for Baptists do not believe in the Apocrypha. They were then certain that the good President had framed them, had composed a • chapter of high literary merit in order to insult them and their vocation. Their only comfort was the curse of the Apocalypse upon anyone who adds to the Holy Writ.
Nearby on the Lebanon road was Prexy's Garden, a rocky hill, a romantic trysting place for medics and housemaids. On the right was Mink Brook and the site of Eleazar Wheelock's sawmill. Beyond was Etna and Hanover Center and a return by the new reservoir on Balch Hill. For courageous students, there was opportunity to observe the arctic flora in the Bottomless Pit, a swamp near the Lebanon road. Dick Boardman and -I were exploring there when we discovered a plump porcupine on the top of a young poplar tree which he was denuding. Dick climbed the tree, shook off the hedgehog, and dodged him as he fell. Years later, the king of Greece gave to Richard Boardman the National Cross for Distinguished Courage. I believe the king must have heard of this exploit.
The East was the winter range for incipient schoolmasters, who could go out for twelve weeks and later readily make up the work lost to indulgent professors. It was a great experience. I visited Farley '98, schoolmaster in Orford. He was living in luxury in the home of the village doctor, and the children kissed him goodnight as they did all regular members of the family.
Pringle taught in Orfordville, Noyes in Canaan, but when I tried to get a school in my home town, I was assured by trustees that classmate A. P. Smith was a better man. They were right, and the school prospered. Later the trustees wrote for a teacher for another school, "Name anyone but yourself." I sent Peck '98, and collected from him a $2.00 service fee. Peck boarded at the home of my great-uncle Chauncey and was beloved by him. When great-aunt Drusilla was at a quilting bee, great-uncle Chauncey showed Peck the hiding place of a polished whiskey flask and the two made merry together. When the term closed, Peck secretly took away as a souvenir great-uncle Chauncey's flask. The good man shook his head sadly as he whispered to me that he feared that Peck lacked in individual consecration, but he never told great-aunt Drusilla. In after years, this same Peck, master in St. Paul's School, has taught perfect Latin and served as an accepted model to poor boys from rich homes.
We knew that there were mountains, but they were geographical features only. No Dartmouth student thought of climbing a mountain any more than he thought of swimming an estuary. Mountains were detestable and had been so regarded from the beginning. Daniel Webster was much more enthusiastic over Bunker Hill Monument than over the mountains of Fryeburg.
In the family records I have a letter from a Dartmouth senior who in 1827 taught a winter school in eastern Maine. In those days men strode across New England and thought little of it. He wrote enthusiastically of the rich farms from Hanover to Littleton and he noted all of the meeting houses. He wrote with interest of the beginning of Maine settlements with stump-studded fields, but he dismissed the splendor of the high hills and the freshness of the unspoiled mountains with the words, "I spent all ofthe next day going through a region ofhorrid mountains." Of the professors, Type Hitchcock alone knew his mountains, but true classicists received this as an amiable weakness to be tolerated. Tute Worthen from books knew Africa better than Grafton County, and he took his exercises with Indian clubs.
We knew that somewhere to the East were academies that were educational as far as the Book o£ Discipline permitted.
In Andover was Unitarian Proctor Academy. It omitted from translation Caesar B.G. I, 1 because there Caesar says that Gaul is divided into three parts. Girls were admitted but not encouraged. Appleton was from Proctor.
Colby Academy at New London was Baptist and extremely so. It maintained three prolonged sessions each year. Football in the fall, baseball in the spring, and general conversion for all students in the midwinter months. This was the most exciting period of the three, as it was the only one in which the girls could participate. In his annual report to the trustees, the preceptor listed the number of baseball victories, football successes, and pupil baptisms. For some unexplained reason, in the Foundation of New England, the Congregationalists built their houses of worship on the rivers and by the milldams, although as Congregationalists they needed no water and seldom used it. The Baptists congregated on hill tops without a pool within miles. New London has such a location. It can see Lake Sunapee but cannot use it. John Bartlett '94 came from Colby to Dartmouth, but the Colby trustees were not satisfied with the experiment, and shipped, crated to Brown or Colgate, all candidates for 1897 college classes.
New Hampton Academy was for Free Baptists. Girls and boys recited in the same classes but sat on opposite sides of the room. New Hampton's great secular study was mathematics, since Euclid was regarded as a true Free Baptist and the patron saint of the denomination. To us came Merrow and Thyng.
Then there was Methodist Tilton Seminary, where boys would dance but could not and girls could but would not. At this school devotion ran high and oratory abounded. Craven Laycock was a result. From its classroom walls unclad classical heroes and so forth and pale, visionary, medieval saints were debarred, and full-whiskered bovine (taurine), Methodist bishops looked placidly upon dutiful and grace-filled pupils. Among these were Drew and Joe Towle.
Secretary, State Capitol, Hartford, Conn.
