1897

Another college year comes up and some of us who are turning our thoughts back to the elms and their shadows cast afar feel that we would like to think of the everlasting elms and the green of the campus, but we know that several of the big trees near the chapel are gone. One that was old when we were young has just been cut down. But the new trees that have been planted have come along and are taking their place on the green of the campus.

I think our feeling is that the old masterful elm has finished its standing the storms, the cold and also the abuse of modern ways, since the black-top roads and the dust from exploding gas have affected the root systems of these great elms.

There is a tendency for men of our age to look back, and I think of the water system when we first went to college. It consisted of a well on the campus where the water was pumped by Sloppy Hall and carried by an old spavin horse pulling a drag with a barrel on it; with two buckets Sloppy filled our pitchers, one for each student standing in a wash bowl. Bathing in our time was sketchy. In our rooms most of us had a tin tub or a rubber mat and about three quarts of water for drinking and washing ourselves.

Bobby Fletcher guided the village improvements by developing a modern reservoir. The first water was so pungent that you could not even have a pitcher of it in the room. Sloppy Hall's job was terminated our last year in college when Hiram and I lived in Reed Hall.

The Gymnasium was equipped in 1894 with a slatted floor, and Sloppy Hall filled two wooden wash-tubs for us for a shower bath. There was no heat in the building and as the water froze on the edges of the tub we certainly had a cold bath. It didn't take much showering with a tin dipper out of an ice-filled tub to satisfy the athletes who were training in the Gym.

In our time when there was less sophistication among the students, we came closer together. These were simple days in the way of living but the enthusiasm of fellowship was always ready to explode with singing on the campus a very important part of the social life of the College.

During the last six months I had a very interesting contact with the music of the College, having been presented with tape recordings, including the score of the songs written by Frank Logan and played on the piano by Park Taylor—songs that have been developed in the last three years and sung by the Glee Club in different parts of the country. I knew about these songs for these two boys worked on one of them when I was a visitor at my fraternity house and I sat beside them at the piano as they created the "Little Red Squirrel." I had a very happy hour after a baseball game, where Frank Logan had pitched and won, when he sat down quietly at the piano and sang these various songs for me as his only guest. I went to his room and begged him to dig out of the desk drawer the scores for these songs. He did this and completed those that were partially done, and then he went to the Music Department and recorded these 12 songs on tape.

It is a wonderful experience to come close to the student of today who is living in a new world of excitement, but still influenced by the great power of college singing, and I often think how important it would be if such voices as those of Ned Woodworth and BillieMcFee could have been recorded, as I have been able to do with a student who graduated last year-Frank Logan.

The Music Department of the College has done a wonderful job and we all ought to get into the spirit of singing again, college singing.

Secretary and Treasurer 886 Main St., Bridgeport 3, Conn.