1888

No concerted action by the class has been made for a Reunion at the coming Commencement, but individuals desiring to attend may take up the matter of hotel accommodations with Donald W. Cameron of the Personnel Bureau.

"Friends of the Dartmouth Library" is the latest of the numerous College publications to reach our desk. This worthy objective is to encourage a broad outlook for rare and unusual books and manuscripts that will aid and enhance the value of Baker Library. Perhaps the little coterie now living who helped move the books in 1885 from the second floor of Reed Hall to the new and wonderful Wilson Hall can become honorary members. The Library had been housed in Reed Hall since it was finished in 1840. When the time came to make the change, the 350 students volunteered, and working in two hour relays, moved the 60,000 books in four days to the new Library. Wooden "stretchers" or colonial "biers" were found by the College and used in making the transition. The total fund for Library use at that date amounted to $83,000, a sum gradually built up by "friends" from a beginning in 1770.

A letter from Pattee to Wendell Williams mentions the books he is reading. Of-fourse Pattee is our outstanding example of either a student of literature or a book worm, since he has read about everything written. Just now he is reviewing the Classics, even DeSenectute. When a youngster Pattee taught in the Mendon, Mass., High School, in the home town of Williams, and visiting his home one day recalls that he found Williams' father reading Consuelo by George Sand. Pattee now writes, "Have you noticed how George Sand is being revived? A new biography and a new edition—l think I shall read her again." The Book Clubs, also, have gone back to some of the old standard works. But the writer, with his semi-ripened literary taste, recalls having read Cicero's classic concerning old age when he was nineteen years old and has no need of it now. At present his taste is appeased by an old book, Struggles and Triumphs or FortyYears' Recollections of P. T. Barnum. This book can be recommended as collateral reading for a Dartmouth Economics Course for sharpening wits, and irverifies that old adage, "Each moment a 'sucker' is born—and two more are born to catch him." Our apologies to Pattee for this note, but legitimate news from the 188 Class is suffering from the Law of Diminishing Returns.

Secretary, 135 Summer St., Maiden, Mass. Treasurer, 32 Claflin St., Milford, Mass.