1897

This month I am going to make a personal report o£ a visit to Hanover, where Elizabeth and I went to attend a fraternity banquet in December. When the train reached Holyoke, we were sure there would be snow at Hanover. There ought to be snow. When we arrived the campus was beautiful, with a large green Christmas tree in the center. Friday evening there seemed to be a hush all over the place. The bells were ringing clear and cold like sleigh bells ring on the clear, quiet night of first snow.

Saturday morning we looked out from our campus-view room to a new world in the snow. Boys were hurrying to class, some with skis all walking with a rapid swing; college warbrides going to market, some of the older married ones pushing a baby sleigh, some blankets were blue and some were pink. We ought to have a name for these kids born on campus. How about "campoose"?

During Friday evening and Saturday morning I had some official chores to do. I checked up with Virgil Poling at the Workshop, where I am trying to start homespun weaving for boys who need money. I found the Workshop very busy—Boo boys are taking some form of work—mostly woodwork. Downstairs where our old gym used to be, the women of Hanover are running a first-class craft shop, doing weaving, silver and other metal work. A short time ago they presented me with a pair of cufE links made with trout flies for decorations- Parmachene and a Silver Doctor. I visited the Hobby Shop where a professor was at work. He told me that here he trained his hands and not his head. It is a very interesting shop.

I visited Charlie Widmayer, the editor-inchief of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, to check up on the editorial policy. To be fair on our reports in the use of printers' ink, I have to ask each one of you to let me have some interesting facts about yourselves. That is what they want in the magazine.

I spent a busy half-hour with "Chick" Camp who has charge of the intra-mural and fraternity activities. I have come in contact with him a great deal in connection with the Dartmouth Fraternity Alumni Advisory Board. He is big, strong, well-informed and just the right age to work with the boys.

I visited Bill Maeck, assistant to the President, to get first-hand information as to what the fraternities can do. These are four work horses.

Virgil Poling, who is classed as one of the "loose-enders" of the faculty, is a very interesting man. He just completed a house, doing most all of it with his own hands. It is one of the most interesting houses I have ever seen. He told me that he couldn't afford to keep it—someone wanted it too much with too many thousands of dollars. You fellows all ought to know Widmayer, Poling, Camp and Bill Maeck.

After a short business meeting at the fraternity house, Elizabeth and I sat down to the banquet. At our table were two professors and their wives, a doctor who had become very well-known and prosperous, an insurance man who had reached the top, and five couples of the married students. Great changes have taken place in fraternities since the war. One of the young wives across the table from me, the mother of a six months' old baby girl born since I saw her last year, told me what a fine place Hanover was to have a baby. Told me about sitters" and life in the "wigwam" and other important things in a baby's life. Another one of our college war-brides of last year who sat beside me turned and said in a most natural way, "I'm going to have a baby in February." "Me, too," said another war-bride across the table, "a little later in the spring." I'll never forget that dinner, when a graduate of fifty years and his wife find themselves perfectly at home in a fraternity group. After the dinner, we went into the big living room to sing. College songs are back on campus again. Thank God for that!—after being lost for ten years. We tapped a keg and the music flowed with the amber fluid. Hovey's song belongs to this age. "With a stein on the table and a good song ringing clear.

This year the boys sang to me a song dated in our college years which some of you at least will recall. I found the words for this song and had it set to music (slightly edited) for the fellows. The tune is "The Sidewalks of New York" and the words are:

(1) "Way up in old New Hampshire not very far from here, Stands a strange old structure, Awful, bleak and drear,—Many a sigh of sadness,- Many a weary wail,—Starts the cooling echoes,— In the Grafton County Jail. (2) This way, That Way, A dreary granite wall—Not a single ray or sunshine, comes in that gloomy hall—. Tramps and Drunks together—Unable to furnish ban Curse the day that brought them, To the Grafton County Jail. (3) East Side, West Side, Any old side at all—The drunks are getting boosey, Bums from post to gutter fall,—Drunks and bums together,—Unable to furnish bail,—Regret the day that brought them, To the Grafton County Jail. (4) North End, South End, swinging bar room <Joors—The drunks are getting noisy, Bums are lying on the floors.—Down and outs together,— No cash to furnish bail,—Second offense thirty days more in Grafton County Jail. (5) No more Lebanon, Bye corn, goodbye, rye—You Drunks away from my door, Goodbye, bums, goodbye, goodbye—Boys and girls together, No need to furnish bail,—Forget the days than sent them, To the Grafton County Jail."

Old Pat, the vagabond poet-songster of our time out on the campus standing beside the college pump, sang to "Hiram" Tuttle, JohnMeserve and me especially, as our rooms were right on top of him. This year, sixty boys gathered around a piano and sang this for me in the spirit of Hovey.

How little the years of work and the many, dollars spent to do a job for a fraternity seem when X go back to college after fifty years and sixty boys sing a song for me in the rollicking, happy college spirit, the same that Hovey knew. They have overpaid me for my work.

College boys are taller now than they used to be. Quite a lot taller, and they have awful big feet.

These songs brought back to my mind so vividly Ned Wood-worth, Ben Marshall, BillyMcFee, "Winnie Temple," Frank Drew, Maurice Brown, John Meserve, "Jigger" Pender,John Poor and others of our class as we sang, "I wish I had a barrel of rum and sugar 500 pounds, I'd put it in the college bell and with the clapper I'd stir it round."

One other little picture and then I'll close. We went to the golf course to see the skiing. The hillside covered with boys, first skiing of the season. Hundreds of boys starting for Norwich, other hundreds starting for Oak Hill. "Pa" Rollins certainly started something when he introduced skiing in Hanover!

Fund Contributors for 1947 37 Gifts (Participation Index 79). Total gifts: $2,525.50 (173% of objective). MORTON C. TUTTLE, Class Agent.

1897

Adams, Benjamin F. Appleton, Fred S. Bacon, Arthur A.1 Bolser, Charles E. Brown, Jay D. Carr, Edward G. Chase, Henry M. Chesley, Roscoe H.2 Christophe, Herman Drew, Frank E. Foss, George E. Gibson, Hamilton Gibson, Harry A.3 Ham, William H. Henderson, John R. Hilton, George F. Holt, Hermon Johnson, Frank C. Kelly, Walter F. Lull, Henry M. McCornack, Walter E.4 Marshall, Benjamin5 Meserve, John S. Mosher, Loren A. Noyes, Frank H. Pender, Horace G. Rollins, Weld A. Rowe, Brainard A. Ryan, Joseph F. Sibley, J. Otis Simpson, Joseph 0.6 Smith, Erdix T. Temple, Winfield Tent, George E. Tracy, Charles A. Tuttle, Morton C. Ward, Roy J. Watson, Albert P. MEMORIAL GIFTS FROM: 1 Son, Richard E. Bacon.2 Ulster Knife Cos. Inc.3 Brother, Hamilton Gibson '97.4 Mrs. McCornack.5 Son, Andrew Marshall'22.6 Gift received prior todeath.

Secretary, 886 Main St., Bridgeport 3, Conn. Treasurer, 53 State St., Boston 9, Mass. Class Agent 862 Park Sq. Bldg., Boston, Mass.