1894

Good morning, everyone (as the radio boys would say) this is Phil Marden speaking, pinch-hitting for our veteran class secretary, Charlie Merrill. "C.C.," as we all call him, has had a recurrence of a back ailment which bothered him some years ago, and has requested assistance. He prepared the way for this in his last previous letter, by announcing that the class notes will "be devoted to CHAT," in this issue, and that I would explain what he means by "CHAT." So here goes although I can't see why C.C. assumes anyone would be interested in what I have to say.

He means to say that, away back in World War I, I took over a newspaper column entitled "Saturday Chat," which appeared weekly in the Lowell Courier-Citizen, and which now appears in its successor, the Lowell Sun, and is still written by me.

I did not originate either the column or its name. It was begun by a staff colleague and in his hands it related the doings of a fictitious local socialite named Tommy Tucker, rather in the style of the "Dolly Dialogues" in England by Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins. I took it over when my colleague left newspaper life to engage in war-work in 1917, and I am still doing it after more than forty years. If I am known at all in the Lowell area by the local public, it is as Mr. Saturday Chat" — just as "C.C." is known as "Mr. '94." Now you know what CHAT is, as Charlie promised. I fear that you also are bored.

Charlie further suggested that I supplement the above by quotations from my column, but he underrates my innate modesty. I am going to quote only one sample in which I take what I fear is an unreasonable Pried.

In my CHAT column I usually consider some timely topic in a not-too-serious vein, never redolent of the "Dolly Dialogues, and in the course of years have acquired what I call "my public." People call me up, or write me letters, in the proportion of about one brickbat to seven bouquets, according as they feel about what I have written. What follows relates to the general subject of "going on a diet." It is an obvious parody of a well-known sonnet by Wordsworth, to whose shade, and to you, I offer my apologies. It runs thus: Dieting's too much with us. Late and soon, Skimping and fasting, we deplete our powers. The foods we relish never can be ours. The Doc forbids it - that old gray-beard loon "With gustatory joys is out of tune; He wants us all to feast on weeds and flowers. When we crave sweets he orders only sours, And nasty messes eaten with a spoon. It thrills me not. Great God, I'd rather be A glutton fed on - so long foresworn, So might I, when I sit me down to tea, Have visions that should make me less forlorn, Have sight of proteins leering up at me, And carbo-hydrates waiting to be chawn.

This is the only specimen I shall offer of the CHAT, and believe me it is quite enough. I am sorry to have no news to offer from our "tattered remnant," now only eight survivors of the 86 who graduated in 1894. Next Commencement will mark the centennial anniversary of the class of 1861—Dr. Tucker's class and my father's — and the 67th anniversary of our own. "Fugit Euro citius tempus edax rerum."

Secretary, 74 Kirkland St. Cambridge 38, Mass.

Acting Treasurer, 76 Washington St., Hudson, Mass.