1889

To living members of our Class and families of deceased classmates, your secretary sends New Year greetings and best wishes for the year ahead.

On Thanksgiving Day the time-honored dinner for that nationwide holiday, and hospitality that continued till late evening, were enjoyed by your secretary at the home on Beacon Hill in Boston of Dr. Edwin H. Allen '85. Providing after-dinner entertainment for the two octogenarians brought together for the occasion and directing a much enjoyed program, the variety and interesting character of which space here does not permit, was Nathaniel D. W. Allen, Harvard '25, unmarried son and only child, who lives with his father and is associated with the First National Bank of Boston. Mrs. Allen died quite a long time ago. The Allen home, a four-story, centuryold, stone house, with a beautiful winding staircase leading to the top floor, large rooms furnished with rare antiques—with mantelpieces of white Carrara marble above the fireplaces, is located on Hancock Street, where, opposite, further down the street, still stands the house where years ago Massachusetts' distinguished United States Senator Charles Sumner lived the greater part of his life. In 1889 Dr. Allen received the M.D. degree from the Harvard Medical School, following which he soon began his professional career of nearly a half-century with the medical department of the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, the last 15 years of which he was Chief Medical Director of the Company.

Walter Sullivan of the New York Times, son of our late classmate, is covering the current session in Paris of the United Nations General Assembly. His reports are front-page news in The Times and the Boston Herald.

Letters from families of deceased classmates are much appreciated. Such a letter recently came from Mrs. Benjamin F. Ellis of Evanston, Ill. In it were enclosed two photographs in color taken last summer while she and her family were vacationing in the Rockies in Colorado. In one of these her pretty five-year-old granddaughter Meg Reed is shown scantily attired standing in a mountain brook cooling her toes high up in the Rockies—with her mother nearby looking on. The other—a charming picture of this granddaughter in the foreground—was taken in front of their mountain retreat with a beautiful background of the surrounding forest. The Ellis family is a busy one. Mrs. Ellis serves on the board of a charity which maintains three homes for underprivileged girls, her daughter Margaret is doing Community Fund work and her daughter Elizabeth (Mrs. Fred G. Reed) is editor of the National Safety Council Magazine, which takes her to many cities to speak on the work of the Council. She also has been on television several times.

The death of a classmate often regrettably ends further contact with his family or near relatives. It has been and continues to be the aim of your secretary to keep alive these contacts, either by occasional correspondence or through our Class Notes. How much the Notes of one class are read by members of another class or by others is, of course, unknown. It is safe to say, however, that whenever a class secretary is told of the pleasure of reading his Notes by one other than a member of his own class, he not only is pleased, but, coming from an outside source, it is for that reason alone an even greater inspiration for him to faithfully continue his work as class secretary. Not long ago your secretary received a letter which was an excellent example of this and it was much appreciated, not only for what was written, but for the fine thought that prompted the writing of it. The letter came from Mrs. Leslie B. Farr—the former Clara Wellman, a sister of our late classmate JamesA. Wellman. Mrs. Farr's husband is a member of the class of 1902.

Secretary, Treasurer and Bequest Chairman, 108 Mt. Vernon St., Boston 8, Mass.