Dan'l's Night
President Dickey's announcement that Dartmouth is establishing twenty Daniel Webster National Scholarships for each entering class (see Page 25) was one of the highlights of the convocation in Webster Hall that constituted the first, and more formal, part of the 57th annual Dartmouth Night. After the convocation, attended by more than a thousand students, faculty members and alumni, the program shifted to the steps of Dartmouth Hall where a rally for the Rutgers game led up to the lighting of a huge bonfire on the campus.
The Dartmouth Trustees, meeting in Hanover on the weekend of October 17, were seated on the platform at the convocation, thereby making one of their rare appearances at a college event attended by undergraduates other than the seniors at Commencement. President Emeritus Hopkins was also an honored guest. Brock H. Brower '53, president of Palaeopitus, filled the traditional role of presiding officer for Dartmouth Night. After speaking briefly, he introduced President Dickey, who welcomed the freshmen into the Dartmouth fellowship and paid tribute to Daniel Webster as the defender of the College's independence. The principal address of the convocation, delivered by Dr. Claude M. Fuess '31h, dealt with some of Webster's human qualities as well as his Olympian greatness, and was warmly received. The ALUMNI MAGAZINE regrets that space is not available this month to print the full text of Dr. Fuess' address, but it will appear in the December issue.
Although the second half of the Dartmouth Night program moved outdoors and was more informal, it was still Daniel Webster's night as the traditional greetings from alumni clubs all over the country referred again and again to the special significance of this year's observance. The alumni wires were read by Sidney C. Hayward '26, Secretary of the College, after which Captain Pete Reich of the football team correctly predicted the initial victory of 1952 that was to come to the Big Green in the Rutgers game the next afternoon. The Department of Buildings and Grounds somehow dug up a few skyrockets, in honor of Dan'l, and with this extra fan fare the torch was applied to the freshmen's bonfire.
The fire's glow gave an eerie beauty to Dartmouth Row and accentuated the solid, foursquare lines of Webster Hall. There was more than a little symbolism in this sight the Old Row of the College that Webster loved and preserved and close by it the tangible mark of Dartmouth's pride in her famous son. The leaping flames sent shadows racing in all directions. But the dominant shadow that night was still, all- pervading, not seen but felt. More than Dartmouth Night it was Dan'l's Night, and the College was glad to step back and to let the lights and the bells and the shouts be his.
One week later, in the old Winslow Burying Ground in Marshfield, Mass., the College paid a second tribute to Daniel Webster. On October 24, the actual date of Webster's death 100 years ago, President Dickey, on behalf of the Trustees of Dartmouth College, presented to the Town of Marshfield a bronze tablet mounted on a block of New Hampshire granite. Present also to participate in the memorial program were Senators Lodge and Saltonstall of Massachusetts and Samuel P. Sears, president of the Massachusetts Bar Association.
The tablet stands just inside the fenced-off Webster lot in the historic Winslow cemetery. It reads:
1782 DANIEL WEBSTER 1852
He belongs to the Nation whose union, rock-ribbed, he so largely wrought. Beloved son, Class of 1801, of the College he loved, his defense of her independence in the Dartmouth College case before the Supreme Court of Chief Justice Marshall made her right to independence a constitutional cornerstone in America's heritage of free institutions.
Erected by the TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE October 24, 1952
