1905

With an icy wind driving a light snow across our stark, frozen lawns here in Upper Montclair at the moment, it is pleasant to think of those of you who are presumably basking in the comfort of warm sunshine in Florida as well as other southern states and California.

One of these is C. C. Hills, who, as I write, is just about to start South with Isabel. He writes, "We plan to leave about January 1 and will be in Mt. Dora, Fla., at 1023 Eleventh Ave. - telephone 2-3954. All visiting firemen from 1905 will be received with great joy."

C. C. adds that he has "bespoken" space for our annual mid-summer reunion at Hanover Inn July 12, 13, and 14. Will all you regular devotees please mark this date? As for the rest of you, especially those who have not attended a July reunion, I assure you that you are missing a rare opportunity to renew old acquaintanceships, away from the hurly-burly of the commencement reunions.

Another of those sojourning in Florida is Fred Chase, our able Bequest Chairman. His address is Dunedin, Box 565.

Writing on December 3, Jim Mulally was looking forward, though not immediately, to joining the ranks of the '05 men in Florida. Jim is hoping to have his family represented in the third generation at Dartmouth to continue the tradition started by him and continued by his son Judd '42. Now his grandson Elliott Lilien, of Maplewood, N. J., is hoping to enter the class of 1961.

Walter May who, you will recall, served a term as our Secretary-Treasurer, is one of my regular sources of class notes. At last writing he had had a pleasant call from Andy MacMillan, who is looking very well and faces the winter with enthusiasm.

Walter had also recently called on Ed and Mary Alice Richardson, who were looking forward to entertaining their son John '41, and his wife and two children at Thanksgiving. An Assistant-Professor of English Literature at U. N. H., John had been appointed by the Dean of the Liberal Arts College to a study group, financed by foundation aid, to work out a correlation of teaching English and other subjects.

Because news is brief this month and I am happy to have no deaths to report, this month seems a good time to insert a quotation sent me by C. C. Hills some time ago, taken from J. B. Priestley:

RAIN UPON GODSHILL

As Lamb pointed out in a famous passage, our own lives shrink with these succeeding deaths (of our friends). As we huddle together after each funeral, we close our ranks, hiding the gaps, but the little company of friends begins to dwindle miserably. Even now, in early middle life, I know intimately more dead than living folk. In old age we must be forever nodding and grumbling among strangers. The old are right to say - as they do all say, even the professionally young and optimistic ancients, when they are off duty - that the world is now a poor place,, for with the passing of every friend, and even of every constant enemy, a light goes out, and you are left standing in a smaller, colder world. And always, I think, no matter what our beliefs about death may be, it is not really for the dead themselves that we mourn, but for ourselves and these shrinking and chilling lives that we must see out to the end.

Secretary, 358 North Fullerton Ave. Upper Montclair, N. J.

Treasurer, Box 13, Somerville, Mass.

Bequest Chairman,