The Undergraduate

Hanover, N. H. February 12, 1951

DEAR SARA: Yesterday after you got into your Pough-keepsie-bound taxi I went back to the room and thought about the fun we'd had. It was easy to remember yesterday and I know I won't forget about it in a few months. But someday, when I'm out in the world busy trying to support a family and bearing my share of the world's worries I know I'll want to look back at my senior year at Dartmouth and remember how simple and easy the life was and how much enjoyment an undergraduate had just being an undergraduate. But by then the sharp memories that are in my mind now will have faded I won't be able to remember what you wore when you arrivedor what we did and said that made this Carnival so enjoyable.

It was my last Carnival and perhaps yours, if the world doesn't manage to straighten itself out in the next few years before you graduate from Vassar. People always seem to place a great deal of importance on last things. There is a clique that likes to do last things ride the last trolley car of an old line that is about to go out of existence take the last ride on an old Hudson River Day Line Boat or attend the last performance of a play that is about to close after a long, successful run. Perhaps this feeling is morbid akin to the importance a dying man's "last words" seem to bear.

But I'd rather think that the importance of the "last" of anything is because it's a kind of climax—that the last Carnival is a culmination of three years of Houseparties, Green Keys, and freshman, sophomore and junior Carnivals. Many times when the "last" of anything comes along, so much anticipation is poured into its preparation that it is bound to be an anti-climax that no weekend could be as good as you wanted or expected. But you know as well as I do that the Carnival you just left behind you was no such let-down.

You arrived Wednesday with some Vassar friends who were on their way to skiing at North Conway and knocked on my door at 11:30 or so. Bob McCabe, my roommate, and I were sitting there reading when you came in and we both got to our feet and were glad to see you. It was a muggy, rainy day. All the snow that was left was the color of worn-out white bucks and even that was disappearing under the sloppy rain that was dripping from the eaves of Russell Sage and turning the center-of-campus statue "Alpdudler" into a pock-marked, melting hope-never-cometrue.

Bob and I carried your baggage upstairs from the car after a gay exchange of chitchat with the girls who drove you up, and we spent the rest of the afternoon talking about how awful the weather was outsideand how it might be a good Carnival in spite of the lousy looks of things. And then, later on, you waded around the campus with me as I went to pay library fines, write a story for the Carnival Issue of The Dartmouth, and took care of all the boring little details of college life that I should have attended to before you arrived.

I had Glee Club practice that night and while I was inside Rollins Chapel trying to get my part of the Carnival concert into singing shape, it started to snow. And when practice was over and you came back to the Chapel, there was already an inch or so of new snow. We went to the fraternity house then and partied among the piles of mattresses and pillows and cots that were piled everywhere ready to be made into beds for the girls arriving later. The snow kept coming down and when the other fellows got back from the basketball game they all started to work on the house snow sculpture. We had to be out of the house at 11 that evening, and before you went to bed in the Hanover Inn bunk room we walked up and down fraternity row and watched the snow come down and the lights shine on the white and black trees and the men building snow statues in front of all the houses.

It looked the way Carnival should look sparkling and snowy with laughs and lights echoing up and down Webster Avenue through the snow that was still coming down, and we had to duck snowballs that still-dateless snow sculptors threw at us.

I picked you up late Thursday morning because there was an early Glee Club rehearsal and after lunch we went to Russell Sage and picked up sheets and blankets so I could make your bed in the fraternity house dormitory. There was lots of snow on the ground and the center-of-campus statue was almost finished—a little Swiss mountaineer blowing a long, white alphorn. We spent most of the afternoon helping to set up beds at the house and then went down to Tuck School to mix obble gobble for the party that we had planned for Friday afternoon.

There was a very friendly party going on down there and we stayed until 7:30 or so and then went to the Golf Side for supper. Bob McCabe had a date with your roommate, Phoebe Ashley, and so we all ate supper together and then went back to the Hanover Inn to get your suitcases. All the mattresses and pillows that had been piled in the hall of the fraternity house the night before were now made into beds since the men were scheduled to move out and the girls to move in on Thursday. We were going to the Dartmouth-B.U. hockey game that night, but by the time we finished eating and getting your equipment settled in the house, the game was over. So the four of us went to Peter Stamats' room in Topliff for one last quiet party before the weekend really got under way. We had to be out of the dormitories by 12 and Bob and I took you and Phoebe back to your respective fraternity houses.

Friday morning there was another Glee Club rehearsal and when I finished in Webster Hall and got back to the house you were already up. Stretch Smith was there getting his girl too, and we all went down town together for breakfast at the Streamliner in Stretch's car. You'd had quite a few meals there since Wednesday morning, and the waiters were getting to know you. After scrambled eggs, Stretch went off to run errands and you went with me while I picked up some clothes at the cleaners. Then we went back to Russell Sage and spent the early part of the afternoon there with Bob and Phoebe until it was time to go to the Tuck School obble gobble party.

We waited for a while after Bob and Phoebe left, for my sister was supposed to arrive that afternoon from Bradford Jr. College with an old friend of mine, and when they didn't show up we left a note on the door and went to the party. The party was fun—and just before it began to break up for Outdoor Evening, my sister arrived.

We didn't have time to really eat before the Outdoor Evening. We just got some hamburgers and coffee in a bag and hurried down to the football field. There was a large crowd there, one of the biggest I've ever seen at Carnival. And it was all the more surprising because the temperature was ten below zero. There was good ice and good skating, although Barbara Ann Scott was a little disappointing. We left when Barbara Ann was through and before they crowned the Queen. It was cold, and we wanted to get my sister settled at the house —and besides I had to get dressed for the Glee Club concert that night.

When we got back to the house we realized what a crowd there was going to be for the weekend. The paper said 1518 girls, but there were closer to 1800. And there were five or six hundred men from other colleges here for the fun.

Webster Hall was packed for the concert as it always is in Hanover, and you sat in the third row. When it was all over you said that it was very good which was a nice thing for you to say, and I hope you meant it. After the concert there was an informal party at the house, just as there was at every other house on campus, and we went and had fun. We were going to go to get something to eat after the party was over and the men were chased out of the house, but the car was frozen and so we just said good night. It was 3 a.m. anyway.

Saturday there was a jazz concert in Webster Hall in the morning. We missed it because I had to go and try starting the car which ended in a call for help from Thompson's Friendly Service Station. And besides you had a long distance call to Houston, Texas, to get through. So after lunch at the house we all piled into a car and headed for the ski jump. You liked it because it was the first jumping you had ever seen and it was comfortable and warm sitting there in the sun. And after the meet was over we went back to town and listened to jazz at the house with all our weekend friends.

Supper was at the house that night, and you got dresed in a black, velvety kind of dress for the second-night Glee Club concert and the dance afterwards. I went back to the dorm to change after we had eaten, and then you went and listened to us sing again and you were even nice enough to say that you liked it the second time through, too.

Then there was the dance and people dropped in to see us and we talked and did a little singing. It was a longer party than the one the night before, but it didn't seem as long, somehow, because along about 2:30 a.m. we realized it was Sunday and the last day of Carnival. We hadn't done all the things there were to do; we missed the Saturday morning hockey game and you never got a chance to see Man and Superman that the Dartmouth Players put on in Robinson Hall. But the things that we did do were fun, and we would have been even more tired than we were if we had tried to do everything. When I left you at 4 a.m. Sunday morning you said that it was a fine Carnival and I believed you meant it because I felt the same way.

Sunday morning had the usual funereal air about it. We had breakfast with Stretch Smith, Will Cross, and their dates at the Golf Side, and then we spent the rest of the morning collecting coats and gloves and things that were scattered all over the campus. When this was all done, you and I (and Bob and Phoebe) gathered for the last time in 410 Sage for a rehash of the weekend. And then I took you to the Hanover Inn where a big, black De Soto cab was waiting to take you home again. And that was the end of Carnival.

But it was such a pleasant time that I think you'll want to remember it. I didn't have room here to put in all the details about what we did and said but you'll remember them yourself when you read this and recall the weekend as a whole. And I hope that when other people read it they'll remember their last Carnivals too.

It means something to me as I write this now; and I think it will mean more to me when I read it again in a few years.

SETTING THE THEME for Winter Carnival snow sculpture, "Alpdudler" stood 25 feet lligb m the center of campus and blew an alphorn 30 feet long. The alpine figure had his picture taken hundreds of times.

DARTMOUTH'S CARNIVAL QUEEN: Susan Darrah, Smith sophomore from East Orange, N. J., reigned over the 41st Winter Carnival. Blonde, blue-eyed, and 19, she weathered the press ordeal with poise.

PRIZE-WINNING SNOW STATUES were (left) Gamma Delta Chi's "Gammadoodler," a humorous variation on the alpine figure gracing the center of cam- pus, and (right) Richardson Hall's Swiss "dudler" under a giant alpine hat, also a play on the DOC's theme statue.

THE STADIUM SET FOR "WOMEN AND SONG," OUTDOOR EVENING CARNIVAL SHOW

FORGOTTEN MAN: The Carnival Queen's student host is likely to get pushed into the background, but he does manage to spend some time with her and here Dave Saxton '5l, soccer captain from Short Hills, N. J., is shown at the ski jump with his celebrated date, still within camera range.