1931

The calendar says we are well into autumn; the thermometer says it's summertime and I feel as though it were spring. Obviously, with all those conflicts this column is likely to be a heterogeneous mishmash. For example, the other day I was asked to meet one of the attorneys representing a plaintiff against one of my clients. Naturally I was prepared to be a real tough guy and make it clear that anybody who wanted to mix it up with us had better get ready for a lump on the head. Then, in the door walked Sid Rubin. The upshot of it was that we never did get around to discussing the subject at hand; and maybe that's the best way to handle those things anyway.

With my change of business address from 42nd Street to 55th and Park, I find myself walking a dozen blocks up town in the morning and the same dozen back at night. This daily dozen not only thins my waist and flattens my feet but it occasionally allows me to bump into guys whom I never saw while I was walking underground from train to office. A week ago I ran into Hal Andres. That's a figure of speech because Hal's carcass isn't the kind that one runs into while one is in his socalled right mind. He still looks as though he could roll up his sleeves, dig in his heels and open a hole through flailing bodies in the middle of the line. His report is that the Andres family is in real fine shape and that "nothing spectacular ever happens to us." My guess is that a little probing will show that Hal and Ruth have become so accustomed to the spectacular that it seems ordinary. Thus ..."nothing new to report." To extend that guess, it probably applies to most of you reading this column right now.

While using the excuse of a "business meeting" at the Stork Club on the opening day of the Series as a chance to watch the game under the guise of duty, I turned just in time to see Jack Warwick jet-propelling toward a similar bit of dissembling. That character has either been talking directly with Ponce de Leon or he is ingesting high-octane Wheaties. Continuing this Cook's tour, I dropped into the annual premium show at the Astor and while gawking around the various exhibits, fell into conversation with a very presentable and persuasive gentleman who, after sometime, turned and said, "The longer I talk with you the more I think I know you." It was Wally Thorsen and, despite the number of times we have talked over the telephone, we hadn't seen each other often enough (if at all) during the past twenty-odd years to permit immediate recognition. That's an uncomfortable thought, you know? Geographical separation is inevitable but somehow or other those memories should be deeper and clearer than that.

Charlie Engstrom and family spent ten days during August in Hanover and during that same period Dick Holbrook and family were at the Inn for a weekend. During the early part of September, Howard Crosse and wife trekked up from New Jersey to tramp the campus grass once more. Word has just come in that over a month ago Jean Gilchrist of Montreal joined the class of '31 by taking the name, Mrs. George B. Russell. Until I read the announcement, it never dawned on me that George is the brother of Rosalind Russell. I'm never sure what to do with informa- tion like that, except it seems to me that something should be done. Incidentally, it's almost inevitable that George would be listening to wedding bells and dodging rice because with the middle name Benedict, he couldn't long remain a bachelor. (That's intended to be a kind of wry witticism, but if I were you I wouldn't labor over it too long.) Again, in the Lohengrin department, Blaine Miller joined the benedicts (I have to put that in so you would know what I was talking about in the previous item) last August.

All too obviously, there aren't enough items to fill this column so I'd like to comment on something that recently added to my pleasure in being a Dartmouth graduate. It was a short passage in President John Dickey's convocation address at the opening of school this year. John always has something significant to say and generally manages to say it in a memorable way. The point I refer to is his definition of "the liberal arts" as "the liberalizing arts." That's the kind of concept that I would have been proud to have engineered; but I'm just as proud to have had it conceived in application to Dartmouth ... because it's the way I like to think about what those four years in Hanover were supposed to have done. Please read John's address and then sit back and muse about whether that definition applies to what Dartmouth did to you. And while you're in that mood, just toss an occasional thought in the direction of the job that Charlie McAllister has to do between now and June 1956 in getting that Class of '31 Memorial Fund built up to the point where it will reflect just how far those "liberalized arts" went in making us liberal.

So long for now ... keep on being '31 see you next month.

Secretary, Lambert & Feasley, Inc. 430 Park Ave., New York 22, N. Y.

Treasurer, 1512 Spruce St., Philadelphia 2, Pa.

Memorial Fund Chairman, 224 Beverly Rd., Scarsdale, N. Y.