NEW FASHIONED WINTER

"No, my friends, it's a good new fashioned winter. You wouldn't be yelling in ecstasy over that old-fashioned kind. I remember that inn—the same one—when winter was really cracking down. There was never much of anybody in it but Dave Burns. There wasn't enough excitement in it to keep the cockroaches agile. If any misguided weird tried to bring a ski in the front door, they'd have heaved him out on his ear and reported to the dean that he'd undoubtedly been drinking. Out where they have that skating rink now, they had the finest collection of ash barrels, mud and scrap iron to be found north of Goldbug's on the Providence pike.

"We wish it had been like it is now in our time. That's true of winter in all New England, as well. Many things otherwise haven't improved, but here's one department that's infinitely bettered up with the years."

ONE SOMETIMES notices an attiude of sympathetic condescension among young skiers toward the older generations. It is doubtless the opinion of youth that the pre-winter sports days were very dull times. How much fun the old folks have missed! Charles Crane '06, however, points out in his neat and pleasant fashion, in his delightful book "Let Me Show You Vermont," that plenty of frigid ozone was inhaled by the youth of his day. Transportation to and from school or anywhere else presented a problem. In the winter the problem was only solved in ways that involved exercise and fresh air. Coasting, skating, sleigh rides, and doing the hundred and one small chores of town or country life left no time or need for skiing, if anyone had thought of it.

But when an old timer like Brother Bill Cunningham admits that modern winters are superior to those of the good old days we are forced to agree that there must be something to it.