A Williams Anthology | Page 6

of the New Jerusalem,
the length and breadth and height of which are equal. The front yards
were all enclosed with fences, none of which were useful and few of
which were ornamental. The broad-shouldered old white
Congregational meeting-house stood at the top of the street in Field
Park; it was the goal of restless Sophomores for several hours every
Sunday, and it was also the goal of all ambitious contestants for college
honors. Griffin Hall was then chapel, museum, laboratories, and
recitation-rooms; East, South, and West Colleges, with Kellogg Hall,
on the West lawn,--"factories of the muses," in Lowell's expressive
phrase,--stood forth in their naked practicality much as they stand
to-day. Lawrence Hall library, in its earlier, wingless character of

colossal ink-pot, Jackson Hall[2] and the little magnetic observatory,
still standing, completed the catalogue of the college buildings.
The faculty of that day can be recalled without difficulty: President
Hopkins, whose clear and venerable name no eulogy of mine shall here
disfigure; his stern-faced but great-hearted brother Albert; Emmons the
geologist; Griffin, Tatlock, Lincoln, and Chadbourne, who succeeded
Hopkins in the presidency; Bascom, the only survivor to-day, and Perry,
the best-known of them all. I have taken no pains to refresh my
memory of the faculty of 1856, but I am confident that here are no
omissions. It will be somewhat less easy for undergraduates to-day,
writing so many eventful years after their entrance, to recall the names
of their teachers. One only of our memorable nine is now in service,
and long may he serve the community! All these were ranked as
professors; there had been tutors and instructors before our days, but
none in our time.
The Gul of those days was a four-page sheet containing in briefest form
the membership and official lists of the various fraternities and
associations; it sold for ten cents a copy. The only other college
publication was the Quarterly, a solid magazine of about one hundred
pages. None of the fraternities then existing, I think, possessed a
chapter-house; their rooms were in more or less obscure quarters, over
stores or in private houses. There was quite as much rivalry between
them then as now, and poorer spirit. There was also an Anti-Secret
Confederation, of which General Garfield in his time was the leader; it
mixed freely in college politics and was no less clannish than the other
fraternities. The absence of chapter-houses and the less fully developed
social life of the fraternities left room for a stronger class feeling and
perhaps a more sympathetic college spirit than exists to-day. The
smallness of the classes and the absence of the electives, too, aided the
cultivation of class feeling; the classes ranged from forty-five to sixty,
and the whole class was held solidly together during the whole course,
all reciting in the same room three times a day from the beginning of
freshman year to the end of senior.
College singing was hearty and spirited, but our repertoire was limited.

I recall many evenings of blameless hilarity on the benches under the
trees in front of East College. For more ambitious musical performance
we had our "Mendelssohn Society," whose concerts were not probably
so classical as we then esteemed them, but whose rehearsals gave us
not a little pleasure. Athletics had hardly a name to live. Now and then
a football was mysteriously dropped into the West College yard, and
kicked about in a very promiscuous fashion; the freshmen and
sophomores generally had a match of what was by courtesy called
base-ball. The only intercollegiate contest of which I had any
recollection, and as it seems the first ever to take place, was a ball game
at Pittsfield between Williams and Amherst. Amherst was the
challenging party, and the college by vote selected its team with much
care and went forth to the contest with strong hopes. The game was not
lacking in excitement. It was none of your new-fangled, umpire-ridden
matches: the modern type of base-ball had not, of course, been invented.
Foul balls were unknown, the sphere could be knocked toward any
quarter of the earth or sky; runners between bases could be pelted with
it by any of the outfielders. I think that the score stood something like
60 to 40, and it was not in favor of Williams. It was a melancholy
company that trailed homeward after this contest past the Lanesboro
pond; but since then I understand that times have changed.
[Dr. Gladden has embodied his college reminiscences more fully in his
recent volume Recollections, wherein is told also the story of "The
Mountains." (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1909.)]
Literary Monthly, 1893.
[Footnote 1: October, 1893.]
[Footnote 2: Demolished in 1908.]
TO THE MOUNTAINS OF WILLIAMSTOWN
ON THE INTRODUCTION OF THE NEW RAILROAD
ANON.

Ye guardian mountains of the western world,
Enthroned like