A Williams Anthology | Page 6

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 monarchs of primeval days!?Ye that hold lofty converse with the stars,?And bind your shaggy brows with clustering clouds?As if with wreaths of laurel! ye that count?Your years by thousands, and your bosoms robe?With all the pageantry of Autumn's gold,?And lull your sleep of ages with the wild?And murmurous drone of woodland waterfalls,?And multitudinous song of windy groves!
What spell hath bound ye now? what lethargy?O'ercomes your ancient power? that undisturbed?Ye slumber on, as if ye heeded not?The piercing shriek from yonder fuming car,?Which saith that even here presumptuous man?Has dared intrude upon the green domain,?Which ye inherited when Time was born.?Awake! arise! are ye forever dumb??Let Greylock, most majestic