Radio Script #782

Little Talks on Common Things

November 17, 1968

For more than half a century alumni and friends of Colby College have been familiar with Colby Night, an annual homecoming event on the eve of a state series football game. Started by President Arthur Roberts, and for many years held in separate gatherings for men and women, it was finally turned into a single meeting for both sexes.

While Colby Night is well known, probably few people now living remember that there was also an annual Coburn Night. When George Stanley Stevenson succeeded Franklin Johnson as Principal of Coburn in 1905, he decided that, if a big homecoming night was good for Colby, it would be good also for Coburn. So in the fall of 1905 was observed the first Coburn Night.

No record of that occasion is available except in the columns of the Sentinel and the Mail of that time, but we do have a complete record of Coburn Night in the following year, 1906. Again, in imitation of the college, Stevenson began in the summer of 1906 the publication of what was called the Bulletin of Coburn ClassicalInstitute, to be published four times a year by the Alumni Association of Coburn, with the cooperation of the Board of Trustees. Vol. 1, No.1 of the Bulletin appeared in August, 1906. It contained the Principal’s report for the school year of 1905-06, the Treasurer’s report, an account of the annual meeting of the Trustees, and an account of the 1906 commencement. But from a historical viewpoint, as we now look back on 140 years of Coburn’s existence, it is more significant that this issue of the Bulletin contained the list of all persons who attended Coburn between 1846 and 1906, a period of 60 years and so far as they could be ascertained, gave the addresses of those still living.

It was the second issue of the Bulletin, designated Vol. 1, No.2 and appearing in December, 1906, that was concerned with Coburn Night. In fact it carried on its 1HZ1 cover the phrase “Coburn Night Number”. The running account of the occasion that is the first article in this Bulletin was written by Miss Harriet Parmenter, Coburn 1885, a dignified, scholarly lady who for many years was my neighbor on Winter Street. Let us see how Miss Parmenter began her description of that 1906 Coburn Night: “Coburn Night fell clear and cold after a stormy day. By eight o’clock a large number of graduates. students and invited friends had assembled in the spacious gymnasium. In the receiving line were Principal and Mrs. Stevenson, Dr. and Mrs. Whittemore. Miss Gilpatrick and two students, Nellie Pettee, 1908 and Chester Union, 1907. From the alcove at the left the school orchestra and glee club, under the direction of Miss Davidson, enlivened the hour of fellowship. Then the guests were seated ready to listen to the speeches. Hon. Warren Philbrook of the Class of 1878 presided and the speakers were Principal Stevenson; Hugh Ross Hatch, Professor of Mathematics at Colby; Miss Louise Coburn. 1873; Allen P. Soule. 1875; and Dr. Edwin C. Whittemore.”

In the Bulletin the addresses of the principal speakers were printed in full and with them two letters from prominent alumni who could not attend. One of those letters is of local historical interest. It was written by the most famous writer who was ever a native of Waterville, William Mathews, author of many books of wide circulation, not only in English. but also translated into foreign languages. In 1906 Mathews was 88 years old, and 74 years had elapsed since his graduation from Coburn in 1832. Four years earlier. in 1902, Mathews had written the extremely interesting chapter in the Centennial History of Waterville concerning early days in this town.

In his letter of greetings to the Coburn Night gathering in 1906, William Mathews said: “We live in an age of intense competition, of loud, noisy, ceaseless self-assertion. The institution that is too sqeamish to assert its claims and assert them with sufficient assurance, must expect to be outstripped in the educational race. He who is silent is forgotten. He who does not advance cannot stay where he is; he inevitably falls back. He who ceases to grow becomes smaller. He who leaves off, gives up. So let us shout to all the world that superior educational advantages are offered by the old school from which it was my privilege to graduate 74 years ago.”

In her speech Miss Coburn attacked what she felt was an exaggerated emphasis on utilitarian education. The view then held by an increasing number of people was that if an education could not be used to make money, it was of no value. Miss Coburn said: “The practical education is not necessarily the most truly practical. Here is the paradox of all life. He that loveth his own life shall lose it. The most practical education may therefore well be the most broadly intellectual. The most useful in the long run is that which is the most truly ideal. By grappling with the problems of intellect, spirit and imagination, the mind is trained to cope with the problems of life. In this practical age, if one believes in the supremacy of the spirit, one must hold to the ideal in education and in life. So I am glad that Coburn stands for the ideal, the ideal that I hold is most truly practical -not for indefinite expansion of curriculum, not for narrow specialization, but for elevation, for lifting up the human character to heights of vision. May Coburn always measure its work by the fourth dimension of ideals.”

Miss Parmenter closed her account of Coburn Night with the following words: “Dr. Whittemore closed the speech-making. Then followed the wand and ring drill by 32 girls of the school. Refreshments were served and another social hour enjoyed. The annual reunion came fittingly to its close with the singing of the Latin hymn, recently composed by Arthur Stanley Pease for all formal occasions at Coburn. The hymn gives beautiful and dignified expression to the ideal of the school.”

Can anyone in 1968 imagine a school gathering singing a hymn in Latin? But they did it at Coburn in 1906, and the Latin words of the hymn’s two verses were printed in that Coburn Night number of the Bulletin. So few persons study Latin today that most American colleges have stopped printing their diplomas in Latin, once the universal practice. They stopped because almost no graduate could any longer read his diploma. Yet I think happily a few survivals of that once supreme universal language still remain. Even in the 1960’s at every Colby Commencement, the President of the College still salutes the graduating class in Latin.

The first issue of the Coburn Bulletin contained. as I have said, the program of the school’s commencement of 1906. The graduation exercises were held in the First Baptist Church on the afternoon of June 22 in that year. The two speakers to whom had been awarded the entrance scholarships to Colby were Jennie Louise Hatch and Merle Wilson Crowell. Jennie Hatch’s address was entitled “In the Days of Fort Halifax” and Merle Crowell spoke on “The Mission of the Poet”. Merle Crowell later gained fame in the publishing world. At the same time when Colby graduate George Horace Lorimer was editor of what was then America’s weekly of largest circulation, the Saturday Evening Post. Crowell was editor of the largest monthly, the American Magazine. For a time Crowell was publicity director of Rockefeller Center, and I well remember that he then got me three very hard-to-get seats for a broadcast of Information Please at the old RKO studio in the Center. Crowell ended his distinguished career as an editor of Readers Digest.

Compared with what it costs to operate a school today, Coburn took care of its 150 pupils in 1906 on a very low budget. The treasurer proudly announced that for the school year 1905-6 the financial operation had ended with a surplus of $280. The total cost of all operations had been only $8,700. The total salaries paid to seven members of the faculty amounted to $5,369. The big building was kept heated through a Maine winter for $500. and all repairs had cost only $236. A little more than half of the school’s income came from tuition, $4,771 of the total $8,981. Coburn’s treasurer in 1906 was the Waterville contractor and Baptist deacon, Horace Purinton.

Several items in the report of the annual meeting of the Coburn trustees in 1906 are of interest. They voted that the position of laboratory assistant should be awarded annually by the trustees on recommendation of the principal, at a compensation not to exceed $20 for the year. Another vote warned that all proposed expenditures for social gatherings must be submitted to the faculty for its approval before the bills could be incurred. Like many other schools, Coburn was having trouble collecting tuition bills. So the trustees passed this vote: “No person shall be allowed to graduate whose bills to the school are not paid in full or arranged for in a manner satisfactory to the treasurer before 9 a.m. on the day of graduation.”

Evidently Principal Stevenson had persuaded the trustees to give Henry Hoxie a more exalted title, for the Bulletin announced: “Mr. Hoxie’s title has been changed from Janitor to Superintendent of Buildings, with a view to dignifying his position among the students and to increasing his own feeling of responsibility for the material equipment of the school.”

The principal’s report identified the heads of the school’s academic departments as follows: Latin, Principal Stevenson; Greek, Miss Carrie True; Modern Languages, Miss Alice Dow; English and History, Miss Adelle Gilpatrick; Science. Guy Chipman; Mathematics, Miss Sarah Barrett; Music, Miss Mary Davidson.

It has generally been assumed that, at least until recent years, most teachers at Coburn were graduates of Colby. Such was far from the case. Principal Stevenson had indeed attended Colby for two years, then had transferred to Harvard, where he took his A.B. degree in 1903, and his A.M. in 1904.

Only one of the seven Coburn faculty members in 1906 was a Colby graduate: Guy Chipman of the Colby Class of 1902. Miss Gilpatrick had graduated from the University of Chicago, although like Stevenson, she had first attended Colby. Miss Barrett received her degree at Mt. Holyoke; Miss Dow got hers at Wellesley; and Miss True was a graduate of Radcliffe. The music teacher. Miss Davidson, was a product of Acadia University in Nova Scotia.

Of the long list of alumni that covers the Coburn years from 1846 to 1906, how many are still living here in Waterville? How many such women there are I do not know, because subsequent marriages have made it difficult to identify today these maiden names of 60 years ago. But I can name for you four present citizens of Waterville who graduated from Coburn during the first six years of this century.

There are probably others, but of the four I am certain: Dr. Ralph Reynolds. of the Coburn Class of 1901; Arthur Stetson, 1903; and two members of the Class of 1906, Albion Blake and Dr. Frederick T. Hill.

Year: 1968