DOCTOR WELLS OF VERMONT.

By Don ald Bartlett '24. Hanover: Dartmouth Publications, 1958. $1.00.

Dartmouth, with its rich mythology, does well to provide for adding new chapters to its vivid and varied story; for the myth of an institution, whether religious or civil, is far more vital and creative than its physical monuments or its soberly recorded annals. By its very location Dartmouth is destined to be the creator of myths, today, as at the time of its founding. Deer still come down from the hills to devastate professorial gardens and bears eviscerate cows in the pasture. To be sure, many Dartmouth students have never had "the hill wind in their veins" nor would they be able to distinguish between granite and other igneous rocks, but the stage is set for adventure among the forests and the hills. It is always waiting for the actors.

It is such an actor in such a setting that Professor Bartlett in his short monograph brings back to many of us from a time ten decades back, the memory of a man who was all but a myth in his own time and, in the perceptive and moving pages of Doctor Wellsof Vermont, seems to have achieved permanent mythic stature. Tenderly, but without sentimentality, the pages of this minute biography portray a man physically less favored than most men, socially and emotionally frustrated, and yet, in spite of all, one who knew beauty: beauty of poetry, of music, of mountain top and forest, of the understanding association with friends. The very real triumph of these pages is that, on reading them, we do not feel pity for this man. There is in them a sort of Conradian "victory," that illumines the character of a man who, on a superficial judgment, might seem to have ended in failure. It is men of such a stamp who in full measure return to an institution what they have received from it and, in addition, precious beyond compare, the gift of their greatness.

It is to be hoped that Dartmouth Publications will, from time to time, sponsor more such monographs, for the myths of such men as Dr. Wells of Vermont constitute Dartmouth's "possession forever."