1889

Secretaries of the older classes well know how increasingly difficult it is as the years pass to gather sufficient material for Class Notes to utilize the space allotted each month for their publication. Your secretary was experiencing such a difficulty as the time approached for preparing news for this issue. The problem was finally averted, however, when in the very nick of time, he received a letter - one of the first for a long time, from his only living classmate, Edwin B. Davis, who fell and broke his arm nearly a year ago. He wrote: "I guess everybody had given me up, as I myself had - last April, but I've popped up again, and only the Lord knows that maybe I'll run you a race yet." Later in his letter he referred to his family life at their home in Tulipwood on Hamilton Road, a few miles out of town in the suburban district of New Brunswick, N. J. He said that all their wants are well provided for by Rutgers University, including a competent nurse. Mrs. Davis, he wrote, "is chipper as a lark at the age of 89, and suns herself on the front-porch when the weather permits." His daughter, he wrote, "helps around the house, while I sit in my padded armchair and applaud, so, we are comfortable and happy."

The adventure-loving son and namesake of our deceased classmate Walter S. Sullivan is again in the Antarctica reporting news in connection with Admiral Byrd's present expedition in the South Polar region. From McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, a report from him published in the New York Times, states that the United States Navy after a long struggle has finally successfully seized from an army of 150,000 penguins a four-acre beachhead at Cape Hallett and has begun to build a base there. The battle with the penguins began, it states, when a landing was made on a beach of volcanic ash along the west side of a cape which rises abruptly 10,000 feet into the air, the coast is backed by 10,000-foot mountains whose skyline is a combination of needle-like rock pinnacles and soaring glaciers. The report then went on to say that when the Navy began operations, the beachhead was completely occupied by penguins that had just completed hatching their eggs. Their chicks were everywhere. But this being the only level ground suitable for the station, a small portion of it—loo square yards —was fenced off. The penguins and their offspring watched these operations with interest, but did not move. Then the battle began. Sailors gathered the squawking youngsters into baskets while their shipmates threw nets over the struggling adult birds. The four acres of ground became a scene of bedlam, the air was pierced by sharp, indignant cries, until all birds in the area had been moved outside the enclosure. Later when a tractor bulldozed the area so that buildings could be erected, it was found that the ground to a great depth was a mixture of gravel and penguin guano the residue of centuries of penguin habitation there. This adventure-loving reporter is the only son and the youngest of our late classmate's family of five children, all of whom are married except the youngest daughter Nancy, the talented artist of the family, who lives in New York City and each year at the Yuletide Season remembers your secretary with her friendly and much appreciated greetings.

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