1878

It would be interesting and funny too, if five old men could, be heard comparing notes on their experiences with the infirmities of age and their individual response thereto. Bouton, for instance, commenting on Hayt's bath-room bump, tells how several years ago, convinced by several rather sharp warnings that a tub was too dangerous a means of recreation for an old man, he forsook the tub for the sponge or wash-cloth method, finding greater security and no loss in bathing results. At least one other of the five prefers Bouton's revised method, and has practised it, six days cold, the seventh hot, since College days, when tubs were scarce and showers unknown. Really, don't you think a poll of educated men would show that a tub is no such badge of civilized life as you would infer from hearing our American Super-patriot boast of our high standard of living?

A similar poll might be taken on experience in domestic life. All five are family men, Patriarchs indeed, each proud of wife and children, and while illness and death have brought grief to some, no one of the five has had cause to worry about the integrity, the loyalty,—filial or civil of any of his offspring. Isn't this a record worthy of a place in the obituary of a Class?

Tarbell at last confesses to having been laid up for a week of serious illness, even as his more youthful classmates often are, but is recovering, even as they, having yielded to the diagnosis of his attending physician, at first doubted. Just emerging from the gloom of the long Allis Chalmers strike, under the shadow of which he has been living, he hopes Congress will unite upon some measure to deprive the Unions of power to defy Government and to heap misery upon the masses Parkinson, now in Washington, but soon bound for White Plains, N. Y., is trying to complete the rounds of the three branches of his family and reach a rest-home in the vicinity of Newtonville, Mass., while he is still able to make his own toilet with only occasional assistance, and before his volunteer custodians seek their summer vacations Parkhurst, not yet back to his office, expects summer weather to open his shell and bring him to his feet.

Since for uncounted ages mankind has struggled to subdue to his own use, both constructive and destructive,—with marvelous but nearly equal success in both,—one terrible elemental power, why become hysterical over the discovery of another scarcely more dangerous? The lesson of both fire and the split atom is that reality is not to be found in matter but in mind. The share of the individual in the public regulation of any such force is to be found in his personal self-control. Is not Self-Control the primary object of a liberal education?

Secretary, 103 Otis St., Newtonville, Mass.