A DARTMOUTH READER.

Edited byFrancis Brown '25. Hanover, DartmouthPublications, 1969. 339 pp. $8.50.

A volume of selections to illustrate two hundred years of Dartmouth is a highly desirable addition to the Bicentennial Year. The enormous amount of material available could only result in no two people agreeing on what should be included, so happily the choice was not left to a Committee but to one man, Francis Brown, a student and teacher at Dartmouth, an historian of reputation, and now for many years editor of The New York Times Book Review. The result of his careful selection is a book of real interest, even to non-Dartmouth readers.

Mr. Brown divides his book into nine sections, each chronologically arranged. The first one, "In the Beginning," gets the College started. Here the selections from Eleazar Wheelock should really be read together with Professor Darnell's article in the December 1969 MAGAZINE, for a fuller picture of Wheelock's political acumen. As for John Ledyard's farewell letter, one can only agree with Mr. Brown's hopes that the sentiments were meant, but it is hard to believe they really were. One can agree too with the policy of no footnotes, but in many places they would help, as in reading Freneau's poem on the destruction of College Hall. How many today, among the alumni, know what switchel is, or think of John O'Connor as anybody but the chief of the campus police?

The long section, "On the Campus," is made up from diaries, letters, and recollections of undergraduates - you'll like all this for many reasons. In reading the account of chapel by Edwin Frost '85 and how Josiah Quincy '84 always had his hat ready to put on with the final Amen, my thoughts turned to the quick and aggressive bridge player I used to meet in action. And lots of us remember Fred Pattee '88, to say nothing of youngsters like Bill Rotch '37.

You will just have to get the book for yourselves - for the sections on visitors; for the one called Extra-Curricular with the wonderful bit on the College Grant; for the tributes to members of the faculty, John Mecklin, David Lambuth, and Lew Stilwell; and Stearns Morse's unforgettable words on President Hopkins. Many of the men of Dartmouth roam, and there is a section on this. Some don't, and so there is a whole section for Parker Merrow '25, who thought no automobile less than twenty-five years old worth driving and who used to give a lecture on guns once a year to Al Foley's Cowboys and Indians, in the course of which a gun always went off by accident. There is a section on fiction, including an account by Budd Schulberg '36 of his tragic visit to Hanover with F. Scott Fitzgerald. There is, finally, Robert Frost's Commencement talk in 1955.

Here is a book to enjoy, very handsomely printed by the Stinehour Press - and one to make us all, of every age, remember that student restlessness, even violence, is not new, and that people have always been concerned about making Dartmouth a better place in which to get an education. Finally, may I apologize to those whose writings space would not let me mention, and to those readers who liked their words immensely. So did I.

Mr. Hill is Professor of History Emeritus atDartmouth.