1918
You must let me assume I'm writing to you — I am writing to and for you; have a good West Coast vacation - and interested Eighteeners are welcome to read over your shoulder. You gave me a free hand: "Do a piece on classmates, on the College, or the world in general." Gaily I had just consented when to us all "our Class and the College and the world in general" suddenly looked different, with Dick Holton gone. You had written the alarming news that he was ill, but word of the end, on January so, brought shock and sorrow. Edith Holton and Mary Louise (Holton) Buchanan will, we trust, find sustaining comfort in the assurance they must feel that the College and the Class he long loved and long served well remember Dick with gratitude and affection. ...To the bereaved family, too, of 1918's Dr. Leon White, who after his distinguished career in medicine, died on January 12, the College and the Class proffer deep sympathy. . . . Both Dick and Leon would, we think, say "Close ranks and carry on"; and so we must....
It's mid-morning, Tom, as I write. Hanover glitters in deep snow, it's cold - zero minus - and from my Sanborn House study I see stumbling toward the Old Row across campus some hundreds of shivering undergraduates of '61-'2-'3-'4. I know there must be freshmen among them, though no beanies or toques identify them to me or, alas, to one another after early each fall. But how, you ask, do I know that they shiver? Take it from me, they must. They do. Meeting them on the street I've seen them. Ski-parka-covered from the waist up are some, but below all these unconventional individualists conform to their fashion and wear cotton levis. or sun-tans or dungarees. And for footwear, of course, no matter the season or weather, battered, splitseamed loafers or dirty white bucks (the latter, I hear, some sophomore salesmen press on the frosh at a premium price - pre-soiled!). The noisily clicking unbuckled galosh that made us remember? - march wide 'twixt the legs as if we had gyves on - but kept our feet dry and warm - now are unheard, unknown, not the thing. But those trou! If in the service and stationed hereabouts, these same boys were issued by Uncle Sam and required to wear khaki or blue denim in winter, can you imagine the letters to their Congressmen? ... To their ten-o'clock classes these students are hurrying, some of them break-fastless and many just up. For no longer, as in our rugged youth, Tom, do bells for compulsory chapel clang at dawn. A good thing too, I grant. But now the student body never - repeat: never - assembles formally and entire and complete, even at Fall Convocation. They miss something, the common, the unifying experience regularly shared.... Yes, of course we groused and kicked and rebelled over daily required chapel, and I would now oppose its being restored; but as we complained and protested, do you think, Tom, that we fully realized or appreciated that particular one of its inherent values that nothing could fully replace? I don't think we did. The chapel-bound column of Dartmouth humanity each morning moving in solid mass along the diagonal way from the Inn Corner to Rollins - that spectacle was, and its memory remains unique to Dartmouth men, who from seeing it and being in it gained, each one, subconsciously a sense of belong- ing to the whole College.
While I was still in high school I remember I was asked some question that prompted me to reply, "Dartmouth is my college." My college! How arrogant can youth be?... I was diffident enough when I got here, though. ... Gradually I felt that I belonged to the Freshman Class . . . and then by the spring of 1915, I knew I belonged to the College. I ought to say this better, but as yet I can't. What I have in mind, though, is, in paraphrase of Robert Frost, "The College was ours before we were the College's" which occurred to me last week at the Alumni Council meeting in Cleveland, where I was impressed anew with the non-rahrah, selfless dedication to Dartmouth of her graduates. ... Eventually I or you or someone will perhaps say it right. Perhaps someone who's now an undergraduate. Can't tell. But if it is one of our day, Tom, don't you think he may trace back the beginnings of his sense of belonging to Dartmouth to such occasions as trudging toward chapel with the whole undergraduate body of our generation? Or on a spring evening standing in front of old Bissell with all other Eighteeners and singing with all other Eighteeners, led by Jay LeFevre, "Goodbye, Girls, I'm Through"? Then listening with suppressed derision to the sophomores under King Cole opposite, on Webster steps; respectfully as the juniors led by Jack English harmonized "That Sealskin Sack" in front of Dartmouth; with awe to the Seniors' mighty chorus under Fred Child, over on the Senior Fence - solemn, but with each stanza less so until "Where, oh where, are the peagreen freshmen?" The peagreen freshmen! "That," as Louie Lee giggled, "that means us!" Then in thundering herd toward the Senior Fence, while sophomores trotted and juniors strolled thereto, and we freshmen were the south side of a hollow square composed of all four classes. And we sang with the sophomores and the juniors and the seniors the Alma Mater, our Alma Mater, and we felt we belonged to Dartmouth. I risk sounding sentimental, Tom. It is sentiment, but it's not false, and whatever the risk I'll take it to bring out the point about which I ask opinion. A Class as a whole, the College as a whole - you see what I mean? By the time we were "safe at last in the Sophomore Class" we had all, all of us freshmen, "gone out from Bowler's gym work" and passed his course called Smut. Today not even Freshman English is taken by every man in the Freshman Class. No course in the College except Great Issues in their fourth year is required of an entire class. And for all their sputtering because it's required, it's a great course and seniors know it, their common unifying experience taking it together is educational and cherished. ... A hew day, a new Dartmouth; and maybe we oldsters are wrong even seemingly to deplore and view with alarm. . . .Actually we don't, too seriously. Being now in position to appraise the old, having known it, we just wonder and ask an impossible question of those who know only the new: are the values inherent in the old ways also inherent in the new?
I don't really view with alarm; and when I have to retire, I'm reasonably sure the College will survive and prosper. I'm lucky to have belonged to it so long. . . . Now let me cease posing as an Educator, desist from reminiscing, stop talking of me. . . .
Bill Bemis had the pleasure of putting up overnight his erstwhile roommate when the latter recently attended meetings in Cleve-land. Homer Bennett of Medina, Ohio, joined Bemis and friend at a Dartmouth Banquet. Each one of the trio declared the other two only improved with age. They were sharply hailed by Jeavons '19, who suppressed them, advising demure attention to the banquet's toastmaster, his brother-in-law, Fletcher Andrews '16, who was pretty funny. Likewise present and likewise droll, though not a scheduled speaker, was Dr. Robert Stecher '19, just in from Switzerland and soon to take off for Africa on missions of science and mercy. Bill Sewell '17 beamed upon his younger colleagues, whose hearts were warmed thereby....
Back to my role now as writer to Shirley. You fill this column every month, Tom? You deserve a vacation!
Sincerely,
Secretary, 67 Annawam Rd., Waban, Mass.
Treasurer, Write Inc. 420 Lexington Ave., New York 17, N. Y.
Dear Tom Shirley
