Memories and Anecdotes | Page 5

me as a particular speaking likeness of Dr. Tom."
To one of the new professors who ventured to make a few suggestions, "Who be yaou anyway?"
He enjoyed buttonholing people he met in our "graveyard" and pointing out where they "must shortly lie."
Our landlord--who that ever saw Horace Frary could forget him? If a mother came to Hanover to see her boy on the 2.30 P.M. train, no meal could be obtained. He would stand at the front door and explain, "Dinner is over long ago." He cared personally for about thirty oil lamps each day, trimmed the wicks with his fingers, and then wiped them on his trousers. Also did the carving standing at the table and cleaning the dull knife on the same right side--so the effect was startling. One day when he had been ill for a short time his wife said: "Dr. Dixi Crosby is coming this way now, I'll call him in." "Don't let him in now," he begged, "why d---- it, I'm sick!"
I must not omit the strictly veracious witness who was sworn to testify how many students were engaged in a noisy night frolic at Norwich. "As fur as I know, there was betwixt six and seven."
"Webb Hall," who today would figure as a "down and out," made many amusing statements. "By the way I look in these ragged clothes, you might take me for a Democrat, but I'm a red hot Republican."
He was obsessed by the notion that he had some trouble with a judge in Concord, New Hampshire. He said fiercely, "I will buy two guns, go to Concord, kill Judge Stanton with one, and shoot myself with the other, or else wait quietly till spring and see what will come of it." A possible precursor of President Wilson's Mexican policy.
He was accused by a woman of milking a cow in her pasture; pleaded guilty, but added, "I left a ten-cent piece on the fence."
An East Hanover man is remembered for his cheek in slyly picking lettuce or parsley in the gardens of the professors and then selling them at the back door to their wives.
And a farmer from Vermont who used to sell tempting vegetables from his large farm. He was so friendly he cordially greeted the ladies who bought from him with a kiss. Grandmother evaded this attention by stating her age, and so was unmolested. The names of his family were arranged in alphabetical order. "Hannah A., give Miss Kate another cup of coffee; Noah B., pass the butter; Emma C., guess you better hand round the riz biscuit."
Life then was a solemn business at Hanover. No dancing; no cards; no theatricals; a yearly concert at commencement, and typhoid fever in the fall. On the Lord's Day some children were not allowed to read the Youth's Companion, or pluck a flower in the garden. But one old working woman rebelled. "I ain't going to have my daughter Frances brought up in no superstitious tragedy." She was far in advance of her age.
I have always delighted in college songs from good voices, whether sung when sitting on the old common fence (now gone) at the "sing out" at the close of the year, or merrily trolling or tra-la-laing along the streets. What a surprise when one glorious moonlight night which showed up the magnificent elms then arching the street before our house--the air was full of fragrance--I was suddenly aroused by several voices adjuring me, a lady of beauty, to awake. I was bewildered--ecstatic. This singing was for me. I listened intently and heard the words of their song:
Sweet is the sound of lute and voice When borne across the water.
Then two other sweets I could not quite catch, and the last lines sung with fervor:
But sweeter still is the charming voice Of Professor Sanborn's daughter.
Two more stanzas and each with the refrain:
The prettiest girl on Hanover Plain is Professor Sanborn's daughter.
Then the last verse:
Hot is the sun whose golden rays Can reach from heaven to earth, And hot a tin pan newly scoured Placed on the blazing hearth, And hot a boy's ears boxed for doing That which he hadn't orter, But hotter still is the love I bear For Professor Sanborn's daughter.
with chorus as before.
I threw down lovely flowers and timidly thanked them. They applauded, sang a rollicking farewell, and were gone. If I could have removed my heart painlessly, I believe that would have gone out too. They had gone, but the blissful memory! I leaned on the window sill, and the moon with its bounteous mellow radiance filled my room. But listen, hark! Only two doors beyond, the same voices, the same melodious tones, and alas, yes, the same words, every verse and the same chorus--same masculine fervour--but somebody else's daughter.
A breakfast comment: "It's a terrible nuisance