1897

I elect myself again to be the correspondent for our class of '97. We are coming so near to our sixty-fifth anniversary we will do well to call back to memory those things which pleased us when we were nearing the closing days, when as impatient students, we longed to toss the tassel of our mortarboard from the right to the left of the head and so show we were graduates.

Those late days in May and the early days in June were lazy days. Examinations were passed. We had to do something to discredit the dictum, "The devil always finds work for idle hands to do."

Turn back now in memory. We of '97 were very busy on a project the result of which I now, 65 years later, hold in my hand. It is only a cane, an apple tree cane, three feet long. It is knotty but beautiful. Each of us had a cane and we spent a part of idle time engraving names on our canes. The engraved names were not the names by which society addressed us, but casual names by which we casually addressed one another. The owner's name was on the head of the cane. Mine was "Hendie." Here are others: Hiram, that was the name of Tuttle. "Herr" that was Blount. And so down the list of names we carved the casual name that marked the individual. We used umbrella ribs as a gouging tool; one end was sharpened to gouge, a cork was on the other end to protect the hand.

Perhaps others have reflections of those days and will bring them back to memory.

Secretary and Treasurer 118 Brooklawn Ave. Bridgeport 4, Conn.