Class of 1878

Field, Harlow, Parkhurst, Parkinson, Smith, and Tarbell expect to appear in Hanover for Commencement, and one more is hopeful. That looks small for attendance at Reunion, but 60% or 70% of living graduates isn't so bad, is it?

Bouton has given up coming North this year, as has been his habit for many years. He says Florida isn't so bad in summer time "after all.

A portrait of F. D. Lane has been hung in the Mathematics Room of Cushing Academy, where he presided for so many years. It was presented at the annual reunion of the Boston Cushing Club and was given by the Naukeag School Association, of which Lane was long president and which is composed of former pupils of a school he attended in early boyhood.

Last of all, Parkinson answers his own questionnaire timidly thus: Personally happy; family circle unbroken; offspring all sawing wood in their own way; left eye and left ear dulled somewhat, but still reads moderately and listens over 'phone with occasional repeats; eats, sleeps, breathes, walks with comfort; usually carries either a cane or a satchel, never both; memory increasingly fallible, aches seldom acute, itches subsiding; security not assured, living conditions only recently (and precariously) approaching New Deal standards, but measured by the standards of his forebears verily miraculous. His journey thus far cheerful, free from animosity and bitterness, not without anxieties, but with little worry; no desire to begin over, but hopeful at each turn of the road. Vocation, caring for home indoor and out- ; avocation, pumping classmates for data about themselves.

As to business, thinks collectivism has come to stay, and justly administered is not menacing to individuality or freedom; that when an enterprise on small scale or large approaches monopoly, the question between private and public management turns upon which can be trusted to conduct the business more honestly, moreintelligently, and more considerately of the general welfare; that in either case, responsibility needs to be decentralized and placed nearer its problems; that in either case, too, the worker will be seeking some kind of profit, but that every worthy citizen will be (and is) striving to render more than he receives, not less, eager to pull more than his own weight in the boat.

As to social affairs, the present confusion of morals with mores has plainly shattered standards. Right and wrong in human society, as in any man-made mechanism, surely consists in conformity to or defiance of the purpose for which the same is designed; hence hope of valid standards of conduct and a better social order rests upon renewed pursuit of the purpose that underlies human society and rules our universe of time and space, matter and force, focusing upon that search all the light of science, history, philosophy, and religion. To his simple mind law, especially law that is strictly enforced, is indicative of purpose, and law that prevails throughout the farthest reaches of time and space of which we have trace comes near to being an eternal verity.

In national affairs, he sees the New Deal being winnowed, the abundant chaff being blow away, the considerable wheat being gathered in. But when? Doubts plans for universal security as long as the masses insist upon gambling with whatever they possess.

In world affairs, thinks the unifying process hitherto at work within tribe and clan and nation is now begun upon the world scale and is bound to continue; that civilization is on the march, and the allprevailing purpose is working out a better world order; that we resist at our peril.

Secretary, 321 Highland Ave., Fitchburg, Mass.