Craven Laycock '96

the best time of a real man's life, if that

Craven Laycock enjoys cards, reading and walking. Though no mean cribbage player, contract bridge is his forte, and he may be found most afternoons at the Graduate Club, playing with a regularity and faithfulness challenged only by Dean Bill and Professor J. P. Richardson. Walking, with all the joys that the fine art implies, is his exercise, though he played golf and tennis in earlier years. To the rumor that he believed good health and long life dependent on abstinence from all forms of physical exercise, he replies, quoting Winston Churchill, that "the man who made that statement is flagrantly guilty of 'terminological inexactitude.' " Though he is still to be seen walking about the golf course on sunny June days, he doesn't play any more—he says "I had to drop it to save my religion"—for after several years of play he discovered that his game was becoming progressively worse, and that the part of wisdom was to abstain. He reads widely, "for enjoyment", and although a fair part of his literary bill of fare is admittedly trash (sic) he keeps well informed on problems current and important.

Craven Laycock's retirement represents many a man's indistinct but real ideal of the climax of a rich and happy career. He has consciously realized the gratification in Dr. Tucker's idea of the "Reservation of Time,"—a time when he may, after continued and busy achievement, rest for a moment, take stock of his surroundings, see whither he has come, and realize the solid comfort of surveying a job well done. It is a time when long-accrued wisdom is ripened, when the spirit is mellowed, and the attitudes are tempered. It is, simply, life has been fruitful and good. The experience of many men who have known and dealt with Craven Laycock will vouch for this being true of him, for he is, as much as any man, a living exponent of the quickening spirit of Dartmouth.

Thus he is able to say, "If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't change it for anything." No one who knows him can read complacency into that statement. It is a simple truth, for from his vantage point he is able to see the ultimate value of errors, and the essential parts which both sadness and happiness, and failure and success, play in the life of man.

THE DEAN-EMERITUS