1940

Having been burned by a late start last year and still holding the opinion that football parties are about the best form of class activity for most of us, we'd like to get going on plans for this year before the summer is too far advanced, this being our next to last chance before signing off for the annual summer interlude for class scribes. To refresh memories—we had two Hanover post-game dinners last year, which were enjoyable affairs, but which had total attendance of about twenty, a collapsed luncheon at Harvard which folded after adequate notice failed to get reservations from enough, and a New York cocktail party after Columbia. The idea of the moment from this end is to plan repeats of the Hanover arrangements, extending the invitation to adjacent classes both ways to assure a better turnout. The games in the larger centers, particularly Harvard, Yale and Princeton, require the services of a promoter. How about thinking about it a little, and setting down your thoughts in a letter?

The news, or such part of it as we were able to corner:

Don Tenney has been appointed manager of the San Jose, Calif., agency of Guardian Life. The engagements of Nina Villaume of New Rochelie, N. Y., to Dr. George Schneider3 and of Dorothy Hughes of Schenectady to Coleman Ross, have been announced. George is chief resident at the United Hospital, Port Chester, N. Y. Joe and Gay Sudarsky have a son, Lewis, their first child, born March 14, in Hartford. Jack Ingersoll led 260 candidates in the Ohio bar examination held in Columbus in January, and Joe Adams was admitted in Massachusetts in the same month.

Either the winter was too severe, or the Hanover trekkers came from the more impecunious members of the class, anyway, the visitors at the Inn in March (they send us those little cards) were Ed O'Brien and Miriam and Alex Clark.

Someone, observing the mask of the "Masked Spooner," has suggested that this product of Jack Rourke Productions is JackRourke himself. They claim, now that the Spooner is on coast-to-coast, that Sinatra is a gone goose.

We have felt, more perhaps in the recent news-scarce months since 1940 settled down to jobs, babies and the 5:08, that this column lost about everything except the chronicle of 1940's statistics when Tom Braden dropped the job back in 1941. So, early this month, when Hanover's periodic Bulletin got Tom to write a report, we saw an opportunity tobring some of that back to you. Here is someof it without the author's permission:

"It is a warm and sunny afternoon. I noticed as I crossed Ledyard Bridge just now that the ice in the Connecticut had broken into great jagged slabs lapped by muddy water. Back of the dorms, the ground is just dry enough to play catch, though shoes leave a print and the ground bubbles after it's stepped on. Overhead there are feet propped against the sills of open windows, and walking through the Library, you hear the fragments of the lecture through doors newly opened to the breeze. "Now what are the elements of this situation?', the voice says, asking itself

"Outside, the last snow lies in speckled, shaggy banks along the roadsides, and in clean patches against the brown stubble. The streets are dry with the thick dust of a winter's sanding.

"I remarked about the weather this morning to a fellow newspaper purchaser at the Corner Book-store, and he said, 'Yeah, that's one good thing', and gave me his back as he moved on to breakfast.

"This spring in the air is deceptive. Ever since the President's call for the draft, the atmosphere of the College has been tense, and, as a matter of fact, so reminiscent that it hurts.

"At first, it was almost excitement, as though the burden of thought were suddenly removed and the time for action at hand. There was pitched talk about 'getting out that old uniform' and even 'What's the use of studying now?' It was falsetto judgment, the way people act when their thoughts are overwhelmed and merged by the size of an event. As the passing of the days made the event seem less imminent, the excitement wore off and was succeeded by an earnest and depressed querulousness, also reminiscent."

Perhaps more from Tom next month, if we're given the room.

Secretary, 16 Elm St., Montpelier, Vt. Treasurer,42 Congress St., St. Albans, Vt. Class Agent, 285 Madison Ave., New York 17, N. Y.