Radio Script #858

Little Talks on Common Things
September 13, 1970

This is the 858th time that Little Talks have gone on the air, and today marks the beginning of the 23rd consecutive year of this program. It was in the fall of 1948 that the late Wallace “Deke” Parsons, then President of the Keyes Fibre Company, agreed to provide company sponsorship of the experimental program, which at the request of Carleton Brown of WTVL, I had agreed to tryout.

Certainly neither Mr. Brown, Mr. Parsons nor I had any idea the program would continue more than a few months. That it has lasted nearly a quarter of a century is due primarily to the interest of people — not just older people, but people of all ages — in the happenings of long ago. It is you, the listeners, who have kept this program going, by constantly calling my attention to new material. And I want you to know that I am profoundly grateful.

When this program began Keyes Fibre, besides its plant in Waterville, had a factory at Hammond, Indiana, and an interest in a plant at Hantsport, Nova Scotia. In fact, through Mr. Parsons, I visited the Canadian plant in 1956, and saw it again in 1968, several years after Mr. Parsons’ death. The interest in this program, begun by Mr. Parsons, has been carried on by his successor, Ralph Cutting, and during those years Keyes has expanded into a world-wide concern, with plants in Louisiana, California and Washington, and overseas installations in Britain, Norway, France and Italy, with plans to go even into the South Pacific. During the program’s 22 years, two girls at Keyes have done most of the typing, which has provided the copies in which the broadcasts are permanently preserved. Those faithful girls are Miss Norma Quimby, secretary to Mr. Cutting, and Mrs. Shirley Thomas, secretary to Ralph Field.

Now as we start our 23rd year, it seems appropriate, as the colleges open for their fall terms allover the land, to say a few more words on a subject we have discussed more than once on the program — student behavior in the old days.

A hundred and more years ago~ students seldom revolted, seldom held public demonstrations, had no sit-downs in college buildings, did not take over presidential offices; but they did get into constant difficulty with the college authorities.

With a kind of obsessive reverence for the past, we like to think of college students in the denominational institutions of the mid-nineteenth century as solemn, dignified, pious souls all bent on the ministry as a vocation, never having any fun, never perpetrating any act that could be criticized by their even more pious elders. Don’t you believe it. Neither the students nor their elders were half as straight-laced and righteous as we like to think. It is true that they didn’t know marijuana or even factory-made cigarettes, but they did like their New England rum, they did chew tobacco (some of them even in the pulpit), and they did have their fun.

When we think of the disturbances on college campuses in recent years, it is well to realize that, while student behavior many years ago may not have been so violent or even so organized, it was then as now a minority who caused the trouble. One squealing pig of small size can make more noise than a whole herd of hogs. That’s one reason why it is so ironical for today’s student radicals to call the police “pigs”. These kids themselves are really the squealing pigs.

So let me tell you about some of the student behavior at Colby College 125 years ago in the 1840’s. Nearly every faculty meeting, according to the carefully preserved old records, saw some disciplinary action. Students were often “rusticated”, the term applied to one who was sent away from the college for a specified period to the care of some clergyman, who tutored the fellow and was his academic and disciplinary guardian during the period of separation. The minister was supposed to get the culprit ready to return to his class in good standing when the rustication was over. The practice had begun at Harvard in the 18th century, and in the early nineteenth one of its victims was the man who became the poet James Russell Lowell.

Offenses most often punished by fines were breaking down doors, smashing glass, disturbing the quiet of the night, and unexcused absence.

On July 1, 1850 — yes, the college was in session during July in those days — sixteen students were warned that any repetition of such conduct as their recent absence to attend a picnic at Winthrop would mean suspension from college. On July 31 of the same year, the faculty voted that one Bartlett should be called before them and censured for horn blowing, and be told that, if he was caught again blowing a horn about the premises, he would immediately be sent away from the college.

That picnic at Winthrop may have an interesting explanation. In November, 1849 the railroad had come to Waterville, giving Waterville the proud distinction of having railroad connection with Portland four years before the state capital at Augusta got that transportation. The Waterville road had come by way of Lewiston, Winthrop and Belgrade. The picnic referred to in the faculty records probably referred to an excursion train to Winthrop.

At Colby in 1849 damage by rampaging students was so flagrant that on July 13, the faculty recorded: “Voted that student Dow be appointed glass setter.” A month later Dow was allowed $13.10 for setting glass. On November 10. 1850 the faculty voted: “Whereas the faculty have full knowledge that student McLellan has been repeatedly engaged during the term in breaking glass in Prof. Champlin’s recitation room, also in eating and drinking carousals by night, and in making disturbances during religious exercises in the chapel, therefore it is voted that his connection with the college is closed from this day, not to be restored during the present academic year, and after that only on evidence of his improvement in character.” It is interesting to note that the student thus punished later became a member of the State Senate and the State’s Attorney General.

In the 1840’s students had to attend not only daily chapel, but also church on Sunday. By that time the college did not insist that every student attend the Baptist Church. He could go to anyone of Waterville’s three existing churches: Baptist, Congregationalist or Universalist. But to be sure that he went to one of them, his attendance was carefully checked by student monitors.

In 1848 the faculty voted: “For the fall term student Pierce shall be allowed 75 cents a month as monitor at the Congregational Church, and student Lowell the same as monitor at the Baptist Church; student Smith $2.50 a month as door shutter in the college chapel; student Tarbox is to be paid $10 for the term for building fires; student Libby nine cents an hour for cleaning up the college premises and keeping out the cows.”

Just a word about building fires. When the first three college buildings were erected in the 1820’s, heat was supplied by fireplaces, but by the 1840’s stoves had come into use. As late as 1909, when I was a Colby freshman, there was no central heat in Recitation Hall, the middle one of the three original brick buildings. Each classroom was separately heated by a big box stove, taking two-foot sticks of cord wood. A student in 1909 was hired to build the fire every morning in each stove, but it was the professor’s job to keep the fire stoked during the day. More than 3/4 of a century after student Tarbox was appointed fire-builder, another student was still starting the fires in Recitation Hall.

In the 1840’s the Colby faculty had other menial tasks besides putting wood into the stoves. Every teacher was in a sense a superintendent of buildings and grounds. In 1847 the President was authorized to procure gravel and planks to repair the college walks; Prof. Champlin was to mend the stovepipe in his recitation room; Prof. Loomis and Prof. Anderson were ordered to clean out the northeast room under the chapel; Prof. Smith was told to put a staple on the door of a wood closet. It was voted to allow Prof. Loomis 75 cents for getting the President’s chair from the chapel to the meeting house on Commencement Day. Prof. Anderson was given the job of buying wood for all the classrooms.

One of Colby’s most notorious student pranks occurred on the night of May 14, 1872. When Memorial Hall was erected in 1868, some of the left-over stone — that unique colored stone quarried from the hill near Waterville’s county road — was used to erect a smaller building behind the college dorms and classrooms. That smaller building was the college latrine, where the boys had to attend to nature’s calls. Then the dorms had no bathrooms, no running water, not even interior toilets. The latrine was promptly given the name of Memorial Hall Junior. On that spring evening in 1872 that outhouse caught fire and its interior was soon consumed. In great concern, the college authorities called on the local constabulary to investigate suspicion of arson. As a result, Justice Josiah Drummond issued the following public notice: “Whereas the municipal officers of the town of Waterville complained to me that a certain building, the privy owned by the President and Trustees of Colby University, was on May 14, 1872 destroyed by fire, believed to be not accidental in origin, six good and lawful men were summoned before me to make due inquiry. On June 18, 1872, I issued a subpoena for Nathaniel Butler, Jr. to give evidence of what he knew relating to the fire. Said Butler, disgusted at the faculty’s neglect of the structure, said that he decided to torch it off.”

As a result of the Judge’s action, Butler settled with help of his student confederates to the satisfaction of the college authorities, a total payment of $30. The charges were dropped. Who was the Nathaniel Butler of this episode? He was a member of the Colby Class of 1873, and was the man who in 1896 became president of the very college whose outhouse he had burned.

Year: 1970