1918
Today is Friday 31 October. Tomorrow, football at Yale. You as you read this purple prose will have known long since who won and how - not only that game but also those ensuing on our schedule. I, no longer exactly a football buff, allude to the as yet unplayed Yale game simply as my ploy for citing again the time lapse between the hours I write and the moment you read. It's a thought that always, I'm finding, obtrudes as I face the monthly stint. At which to get started can be hard.
As now! Naught by any means scintillating. But that phrase "games ensuing on our schedule . . tempted me for a moment to prophesy the season. But only for a moment. All I can predict with any certainty is that two weeks hence there'll be a gorgeous big bonfire, its fuel collected and built up during the days preceding by relays of freshmen drafted from various dorms. It will blaze fierce and high. But for what? Not to celebrate a victory won that weekend. It will precede the Cornell game by 18 hours. ... Of course in the good old our days, when all was rational and right, a bonfire meant something. But what today it really means. I wonder. Built and burnt, though, it will be. That's sure. Or - hold on! Is it so certain? Suppose freshmen should refuse the builders' chore. That is conceivable these days. So is a waiver of concern - through sophomore apathy. And would it matter? By serious, absolute standard of course not. But the things students do today purely for the fun of it appear from where I sit on Olympus to be fewer and fewer. At "involvement" and "relevance" and all that, I do not scoff. As an undergraduate, I tripped away on DCA deputations led by Wally Ross to spread sweetness and light among the youth of rural New Hampshire and Vermont. But today, to me, anyway, it seems that from student life something is missing that gave our years here savor. I wish I knew better what I'm talking about. And could say it right. For the present, enough of this.
This football weekend some of the younger men who live hereabout - Morin '24 and Dickey '29 and others - are hunting and fishing in Vermont in the region of Lake Champlain. I mention them as younger men not only because of course they are, but also, rather, in the playful spirit of Mott Brown, president of 1917, when he welcomed to their fall reunion class dinner our own Frederic and Rosalie Colie plus Ed and Betty Booth - the four of us invited by Thielscher and Lynch. Said Mott Brown cordially, "Ah! Freshmen, I believe! Well, well, do join us! We're delighted to have you youngsters in our company." ... With those sophomores we had an evening of hilarious fun in the Drake Room, for which we proffer to our genial hosts much thanks. One notable advantage, I may say, of living within sight of the Baker Library tower is that we don't often have to go to reunions. Reunions generally come to us. We do, though, wish we might have attended a recent one in New York. Our special correspondent - by-line Stephen P. Mahoney - reports the function thus:
"The 1918 luncheon of Oct. 16 at the Dartmouth Club was attended by Californians the Honorable Robert Fish and hislovely Mildred; also by Sylvester Moreywith marvelous Minetta; Harold A. "Jasper"Johnston, who is preparing for his father-in-law's 100th birthday next week; Julius A,Van Raalte; and the Mahoneys. A total of three couples and two extra men. Truly a gay party. Naturally Robert pontificated, and very well, yet with a smile. After viands came the last game of the World Series, which all watched tensely. The Californians as well as the others were Mets fans, which helped make the gathering an even more glorious occasion when that New York team finished the afternoon as world champs and pandemonium broke all over town. That game then was succeeded by a showing of the Dartmouth-Penn game pictures, which left all the luncheoneers with the optimistic glow that the boys should come up with an Ivy championship again. Thus the occasion terminated with everyone happier, healthier, and wiser; if none the wealthier." Accompanying his despatch Steve sent us a note that ended, "Trust that the much publicized ructions we read about in Hanover may terminate before the College does."
Now for another matter. Miss Elliott of Alumni Records tells me that Jake Bingham responded to my delicate suggestion in this column by depositing in her care for our class's archives one 1918 Green Book. Courage to peer into it has thus far failed me. But thank you, Jake, for the collector's item and for the list you send of its perpetrators - pardon! I mean its editors. The masthead, you tell me, carries a grand old senior's name, that of one Clarence Leroy Wana-maker. Then follows a list of his associates, no less than fifteen Eighteeners tried and true: E. Butts Jr., H. J. H. Collins, G. M.Davis Jr., A. C. Gottschaldt, R. A. Holton,C. B. Horr, K. W. Jones, S. D. Jones, A. F.Johnson, H. P. Kennedy, N. G. Knapp, P. S.Miner, C. V. Opper, A. F. Rice, G. C. Stod-dard. When later as juniors our class published its Aegis, by no means all of these fifteen listed among their honors gained in freshman year their association with project Green Book. Even Wanamaker in the '16 Aegis, wherein his achievements through his senior year are covered, omits mention of it. . . . Suspension periods here indicate Time Out while I step over to Crosby to have a look at that '18 Green Book that 50+ years ago I refused to buy. Perhaps I was, perhaps I am, too snide and snooty about it.
PARAGRAPH. Back now at my desk I am, breathless. Whew! Yes I certainly have been snide and snooty. Unwarrantably. Peccavi, brethren. Of the seven deadly sins, that one named pride stains me with guilt. Though the 1918 Green Book is faulty - most of the individual photographs "disappointing," as the editors in a Foreword apologetically admit - it's better by far than as recalled in my sour'd, pride-warped memory. Now I know why I refused to buy the book: the worst, most hideous, foggy, and distorted picture in it purports to portray me! How, back home in Omaha, could I possibly display that? George Rowells is nearly as bad. You, Hort Chandler, were smart: supplied them with a clear, glamorous portrait of yourself taken by Bachrach or somebody. One hundred and five Eighteeners are carried by their names only, not pictured at all. It's a fun book to thumb through, though. And I hope that among the seven presently surviving of its associate editors some one or more may be moved to regale us with an account of the tragicomedy of its production.
On a somber note again we close. HowiePark reports to us the death in Switzerland this autumn of his friend William KentLownsberry who voluntarily withdrew from the College at the end of freshman year. He is survived by a sister, to whom we tender the Class's sympathy. Howie is writing his friend's obituary.
Secretary, Elm St., Norwich, Vt. 05055
Treasurer, 45 Rip Rd., Hanover, N. H. 03755
