A Freshman Writes Home
Excerpts from Letters of Clifford H. Smith '79 to His Father, Mother, and Sisters in 1875-76.
[Continued from the last issue]
OUR MONITOR is sick and I am supplying his place and if he doesn't come back I shall have his place, which gives five or ten dollars a term, I don't know which. Some of what I have spent I can get back next year, and there seems no way of reducing it farther. I must have enough to pay for the wood, at least, the fifth of Oct. if possible, and as much of the rest as you think best. Our commissary says that if some of the money is paid in before it is due he can buy things to better advantage than if he has to get trusted. My provision for charity is on the principle of the boy who made that a prominent item in his expenses, and his father feared that "charity covered a multitude of sins."....
I went to the expense of thirty-five cents on a lecture upon Thomas DeQuincy, the author of my prize piece, last night, by James T. Fields of Boston. He was said to be a good speaker and lecturer, but I shouldn't go again. I am not sorry I went then, and it wouldn't do any good if I was.
You will see that my wash isn't quite as large as we expected, but one shirt does quite well enough for a week and I don't wear cuffs only when I feel like it. We don't have any napkins furnished, and a very few supply themselves. I don't know whether it would pay in the long run or not.
My study progresses at the usual rate, and our recitations are much more thorough and over and over than I ever had before. I am reading for amusement, Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Mr. Andrews and I take the "Dartmouth" together.
Yours dutifully and pecuniarily. Oct. 2—l begin to find out what it means to have a good deal to do. We have begun to read Latin so I have to study a great deal more than I did, and the days fly away very fast. Last Saturday night I was initiated with about forty others of my class into the Delta Kappa society, which is solely for doing things like what they do at the Academy Friday afternoons. Speaking, essays, a paper, of which I am one of the editors week after next, and other literary exercises. I have got to write an essay for our Christian Fraternity meeting, that comes every Monday evening, in a week or two, and with the necessary amount of play my time is about used up. This afternoon one of my classmates, Rollins by name, and I went down on the river a little while. It is the first time I have seen the river since the last day of August. I roll at ten pins some, and kick foot ball most every day.
Oct. s—Several persons here have been very sick since I have been here, one at least of our class going home with a fever. A young lady died this morning, and another just over the road is very sick.
President Smith gave all of our class a lecture yesterday suited to our circumstances, and invited all the christians to meet him this after noon, and twenty six were present to whom he spoke an hour, in a profitable and pleasant way.
. . .My health is comfortable now, although 1 haven't great strength and my bowels are not just right, but my appetite is good and I hope to get used to Hanover sometime.
I got the trunk in good shape also the charity fund which I shall proceed to use when I can get a ten or twenty dollar bill changed. Not even the bank could do it and I havent found a store or any body that had any small change.
Oct. 9-I am glad to be able to report a decided improvement in health. For some time we have had more or less milk at my table at supper The other night for variety I ate nine crackers and milk
It is perfectly astonishing how a week gets away, without my doing half what I want to, or having any time to lie still
This week I have additional work, as I am trying to infuse a little algebra into a Kentuckian's brain. I spend an hour a day on the next lesson with him, so that if he doesn't understand it I know more, and he is also to recompense me for my labor, so I hope not to be a dead loss to the world.
... The catalogues will be out soon, and each student is entitled to five of them. Of course we freshmen are desirous of seeing them. They say we have seventy eight names down The Delta Kappa society has got started and I think will be an excellent thing for me. Our men are all good steady fellows, and the meetings are entirely literary. We have declamations, essays, orations, debates, papers etc.
... We have some history in connection with our Latin that is awfully hard to remember and many a man comes out rather poorly on it. All my studies grow much harder. Yesterday I went to the professor and was examined in Greek Prose. Got along comfortably and am now free from all conditions. I am surprised to find how many have been conditioned, some in Latin, others on mathematics and a large proportion of the class on the G. Prose.
... I don't find mates that suit me yet; I try one man and go with him a few days and then another, but don't see any one to fill Russell's and Ansel's place.
Oct. ii—One of our class is very sick with fever, and Pres. Smith has not been out for several days on account of a severe cold. Prof. Sanborn and his wife, both very heavy people were thrown out of a wagon Saturday, and bruised some, but not injured materially.
. . . The boys have to pay forty cents for having their washing done here, and no mending either. Oct. 16—Wednesday P.M. we were on the campus, witnessing the sports, when I heard it passed along that Ohio had gone Republican, and I came near giving three cheers, but concluded it would be prudent to refrain.
It is very muddy and disagreeable when it rains, the ground all around being something like the clay we used to make bricks of.. .... I have written an essay of six pages to read at the Christian Fraternity meeting next Monday evening I get up gen- erally about half past six in the morning, and I call Mr. Andrews frequently so he can get through breakfast by eight. I have to build my fire and sweep and make my bed, and often do more or less mending, so I am busy untill breakfast My scholar is getting some ideas, but he isn't very good at it. I studied an hour and a half on one example yesterday and got it right, but I guess no one else did, and Prof. Worthen left it over untill the next recitation. The profs, all have our names on little cards and draw them for recitation so it is all chance whether one gets something easy or hard to recite, but it isn't safe to trust to fortune very often, though some times I have got out all right when I shouldn't on other parts of the lesson.
Oct. 25—If the number of meetings one attends Sunday is an index of his goodness I ought to be a pretty religious young man, for I went to six meetings yesterday. First our usual forenoon meeting at half past ten, and we had an excellent meeting, then our class prayer meeting which was fuller and more interesting than any we have had before, there being about thirty five present. That was out at half past twelve, then I ate dinner and at 12.45 started with two others for Norwich. As their service begins at one, we were a little late, but had a good sermon. Then at four went to the Sabbath school, then chapel at five, and finally, to the evening service at seven o'clock.
.... There is a slight prospect that I can have the place of commissary at a good club after thanksgiving, and get my board for nothing I attended a lecture Friday evening by Hon. W. Parsons, who is a pure Irishman, with an Irishman's brogue and humor, but the lecture was grand. I never heard any one but Gough, I believe, that held his audience so completely.
The Aegis, a yearly publication by the junior class was brought out last week. It contains the general catalogue, catalogues of all the secret societies, and all the jokes they can get together, and is sold for fifty cents. I bought one and would send it to you but I sold it after I had read it through for forty five cents.
.... I have read the first volume of Gibbon's Rome, and have started on the second, and am reading one of Dickens novels I have got as nice a stove as could be desired. Last night just before I went to bed, I put in two small sticks and shut it up, and this morning there was a good bed of coals. My little iron bedstead is very nice also. I don't roll off and it is as easy as a corded one We have got some illustrious names in our class, a Benjamin Franklin, a Harlan Page, a Charles Sumner and two George Washingtons!
Oct. jo—l played a game of chess this noon for the first time or rather it was played for me by my scholar, whose name is Alfred Spalding. He came from Greenup, Kentucky.
.... I must tell you of a little specimen of what college boys think is good sport. One of the booksellers bought out the other, and advertised an auction for yesterday P.M., and this P.M. Now he is not at all popular, and some of the boys yesterday after making some disturbance put a rope around the stove and drew it right out doors. He had to close up for the time, and when he opened today, a crowd rushed in and filled the room full and he commenced, but they made so much noise, he had to give it up and a police officer carried on the sale. Pieces of the stove, a table and several drawers got on to the street mean while.
... I have got the place of commissary at Mr. Pelton's. He is a good man I think and does his own cooking and purchasing. I shall have to keep the tables full and collect the bills I have gone to Mr. Pelton's to board, and it seems good, for we have had miserable board at the other place for some time.
My scholar paid me two dollars for eight lessons today. Perhaps you think it high, but if a man teaches one below him, he gets seventy five cents a lesson, and if there is a tutor in college who doesn't have a regular salary he has two dollars an hour.
Nov. I—Ever since the beginning of the term there has been much typhoid fever here, and two weeks ago one of the seniors went home with it and he died Saturday. The result is much excitement, and it is found that all the drains, or many of them, and the out houses are in a most filthy condition and that there have been fifty nine cases of fever among the students, and enough more among the townspeople to make the number about eighty. Consequently it is demanded that the drains be fixed immediately, and that we be sent away to avoid the effects of it. A college meeting this noon voted unanimously in favor of it, and a faculty meeting tonight is to decide the matter I think those who are afraid of it are more liable to be attacked than others and I do not trouble myself about the matter more than I can help.
..... One of our best freshmen was taken sick Saturday and has gone home today.
Nov. 2—President Smith announced this morning, that after mature deliberation they had decided not to have a vacation now, as the doctors say the fever is prevalent in other places as well as here, that it is on the decline, and that cold weather will check it.
Nov. 7—I am still well and there are no new cases of fever Nine of the boys connected with the disturbance at the auction were arrested about one o'clock A.M. Nov. 5. and the next day taken before a grand jury at Plymouth. Parker went to the depot to go with them as witness, but about two hundred students got between him and the cars and they went without him.
Nov. 13—We are wading around here in a solution of mud snow and water. The soil is so clayey that all stays on top. I think that it will pay for me to have a pair of rubber boots this winter.
. ... It is said that thirteen students are to be suspended on account of the Parker trouble. The boating association of which I am not a member, holds daily and today two meetings, as they are trying to get the juniors to come back, who seceded early in the term. It looks now a good deal as though this college wouldn't send much of a crew to Saratoga next summer. I have read Jules Verne's "Trip to the moon," lately, and am now studying Milton's "Paradise Lost.". . . The fever is unheard of now, no new cases having occurred for some time.
