1897

Let's take a little look around at our class in our 52nd year after we had some Latin on a piece of real sheepskin handed to us. "Pa" can read it and probably quote most of it from memory. I think he is our best Latin scholar. What are we up to we fin de siecle guys?

Christie is a Mason who doesn't lay bricks but he insists on tiling at proper times. About half of our classmates are members of that great organization—one of the oldest in history. Christie writes poetry for fun, sells pills for business and catches hornpout for sport.

"Sport" Morse sells bonds, good sound bonds for a good company, advertised by Fulton Lewis Jr.

Appleton watches the safety vaults to see that the right fellow gets his own gilt-edge stuff and nobody else's.

"Hiram" builds anything that is buildable. I remember when I was doing a lot of concrete design I had a letter from a fellow asking me to design a concrete roof for a henhouse that would not leak. I wrote him itcould not be done and advised him to keepducks.

Eddie Carr has not made himself known in any hieroglyphic ink marks or any other form of communications. His efforts to procure for me a much merited medal of honor for saving one of his inebriated neighbors from drowning in the Narragansett Bay are without avail.

John Me serve is seill checking up on the names of his grandchildren.

Erdix is no different, still dreaming of days "When the wind is always in the west, when the fishes bite the best."

Holt is still saving the Ewe Lambs who have gone astray.

Harry Chase is still cutting as needed and no more. He has the best file of pictorial records of us guys there is and knows all our pranks just as the F.B.I, does major crooks.

Joe Ryan is snuggling up under the shadow of Harvard College. Probably learning the Harvard brogue. Understand he is living in Cambridge. Rowe is living in a school house "by the side of the road" where he can be a friend to man.

Pass, part time spent in Athens, the center of learning of Georgia. Athens is a beautiful, small, old city with wonderful houses and gardens. Last time I was there the pipes froze under the bathroom floor and I could not shave until they got them thawed out. Athens' folks are too proud to bury the pipes. "Twouldn't be southern if they did." Athens has a tree that owns itself with a title registered.

"Sib" wrote me a 10-page letter with two long postscripts—one illustrated. In this letter were four verses of poetry, part of it original and explosive regarding things of various deals—the "New Deal," the "Fair Deal" and the "Rough Deal."

Jay Brown is selling maps and globes. Bet he knows more geography than any of the rest of us.

Drew is drawing deeds and other forms of property ownership. I saw a deed in the early records of the New Haven Province that was very interesting. The land in question had been stolen from the Indians and the good English freemen of the New Haven Colony wanted a good title, so in Council they resolved: "That the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; further resolved that the earth be given to the saints; further resolved that we are the saints." Thus this Colony had a clear title straight from the Lord himself direct to them.

Roy Ward is hard at work on river pollution, he says in a letter. Now if a doctor's working in his own interest he must want more pollution to make people sick to increase business for the pill peddlers, but Roy wants to "unpollute" the rivers. River pollution is a paradox. The bathtub, developed to help people to keep clean, made the use of water so much larger in volume that it had to go somewhere and the drains were made. The drains had to flow down hill, and into rivers—went the whole household waste. The brass companies began to make pipes for water supplies and for sewerage, and the chemicals for making sewage traps and pipes brought lots of strong acids into the rivers to kill the fish and spoil the oysters. To keep our bodies clean and our houses free undesirable "excernere," we have polluted our rivers which are often a source of drinking water downstream. Concord, Manchester and Nashua turned their sewage into the Merrimack River and Lawrence drank the river water to become a diseased city with the highest typhoid rate in the country, till the late Allen Hazen, a Thayer School graduate filtered their river drinking water and saved the health of this unfortunate city. I built a similar filter designed by Mr. Hazen for Yonkers, N. Y. I vote to elect Roy as a guardian of the new big river soon to be developed from the "Wilder which will flood north for 46 miles. Let's have this big river, which will be wide, and deep and beautiful, kept clean so that we can let all the New Hampshire boys, the Massachusetts boys and the Connecticut boys have some good fishing. I do not care about those smart Vermont boys who wanted to stop the State at the water's edge on their side so they would not have to pay for the bridges. Now the New Hampshire boys are going to push them back a little and probably won't let them fish in the new, big river. I'll bet that they poach on their side with long poles standing on Vermont soil.

Bolser has flowers all the year by being free to go south "when the frost is on the pumpkin" and north again when he "don't" have to "stomp" his feet in the spring.

Henderson gave the college 38 old coins. You know twouldn't be right for a preacher to try to pass them making change after dusk. Maybe he inherited some pieces-of-eight from some pirate ancestors, but I suspect they came in the collection plate. He also gave the college museum a turn-key tooth extractor. 'Twas fine of John to part with it and it may do the college some good, not so much for general use but as a threat if some of the "profs" get gnashing their teeth too much in red stuff.

Tracy and Kelly are politicians, Meserve,Sib, Temp, and Drew have been. Politics has its dirty side and its clean ones. Only one of these is a Democrat in the bunch. You fellows rate them. Temp has had his say last month —Sib sometime back. The others can clear themselves if they will write me. If any of you fellows have a ballpoint pen just send me a scrawl.

I have just gotten back from my foursome's annual 36 hole round of golf at Norwich—didn't get tired nor drunk. One of the foursome, over 70, had recently been married to a likely looking gal not quite half his age. He had some doubts about being allowed to take the trip this year, but on our promise to bring him home sober she let him go. He slept most of the way home in the back seat, but woke up at New Haven near the Bowl. No scores recorded but I did lose four balls in the worst rough there is on any golf course. They were new balls and I just won them in the Kicker's Handicap.

Secretary and Treasurer

886 Main St., Bridgeport 3, Conn.