<\/p>\n
I have said more than once on this program that, in pursuing old manuscripts and old items in print, I am partial to the year 1891, because’that was the year in which I was born. So today I want to share with you some of the news that appeared in the Waterville Mail in its weekly issue of July 3, 1891.<\/p>\n
For many years after its beginning in 1863 the Waterville Mail had been published by Ephraim Maxham and Daniel R. Wing. Mr. Wing died in 1885 and Mr. Maxham, in ill health, sold the paper to Charles G. and Daniel R. Wing in 1886. When the latter died in 1891, Charles sold the Mail to Henry Prince of Buckfield and Elwood Wyman of Sidney. So the issue of the Mail about which I will now talk bears the masthead “Published weekly at 116 Main Street, Waterville, Maine by Prince and Wyman. ”<\/p>\n
The makeup of this venerable paper had not changed appreciably from its earliest issues in 1863. It was still a very large sheet of nine columns. and each issue usually ran to four pages. In the early days the front page had consisted entirely of ads, except for a few items of general news copied from the metropolitan papers. But by 1891 about half of the first page was taken by some prominent local or state news. So on July 3, 1891 readers who picked up the paper were confronted first by a long, four-column account of the Colby Commencement. Inside is a special supplement insert of two pages, giving full details of that occasion. The big headline consisted of only two words: “Colby Commencement”. The sub-heads said: “From far and near her sons and daughters gather. Thirty graduates go out to battle with the world. Old chums shake hands and tell stories at class reunions. Business of importance transacted and plans put forth for the future.”<\/p>\n
Albion Woodbury Small, who was then nearing the end of his presidency and would soon leave for the University of Chicago. where he would make an international reputation in sociology, preached the baccalaureate sermon on the text “light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light.” The Mail quoted Dr. Small as saying in that sermon something that might well be said to college students, as well as to the rest of us, today. Dr. Small said: “With quarrels over doctrinal systems of religion I have no interest. They will never agitate me so long as I question the fallibility of human reason. But I do shudder at the possible turn which young lives may take. when they discover that religious doctrines are not the immediate and ultimate voice of God. If you are likely not only to reject opinions about religion. but religion itself. Men spin and weave and twist the truth into all manner of distortions in theology and religious philosophy. The distortions fade and die. but the truth remains. The religion of Jesus is a recognition of the permanent and the unalterable in the constitution of the moral world and in individual human beings.”<\/p>\n
Who were some of the men and women who received Colby diplomas in 1891? Two of them are very well remembered in Waterville: Franklin Johnson. who later became President of Colby, and Norman Bassett, later a justice of the Maine Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
Another classmate who had a distinguished career was William Abbott Smith, son of Colby professor Samuel K. Smith. W. A. Smith served for many years as pastor of the Waterville Congregational Church, after notable service as editor of Zion’s Advocate. I cannot resist here the temptation to interrupt with a story about William Abbott Smith. For a time, when I was teaching at Hebron Academy, Mr. Smith was pastor of the Hebron Church. Teacher of science at Hebron and master in charge of the largest dormitory for boys, Atwood Hall, was Merlin Joy, a native of Fairfield, who later returned to that town to serve as its superintendent of schools.<\/p>\n
One Sunday Mr. Smith took as his topic happiness in the Christian life, happiness even in the midst of problems and troubles. In the course of his sermon Mr. Smith suddenly asked “Where is joy? Where can joy be found?” Students could not resist the impulse to laugh, while faculty members looked around to see how Merlin Joy was taking it. But Merlin, who was usually a faithful attendant, was not present. Back in his master’s suite in Atwood Hall, Merlin was joylessly nursing a stuffy cold. That was where Joy could be found.<\/p>\n
Another well remembered person in that class of 1891 was a member of the Illsley family, four generations of which have attended Colby. Reuben lllsley, after his Colby graduation in 1891, was long an official of the Internal Revenue Department in Washington. He married his Colby classmate, Mary Morrill, whose sister Frances still resides in the old Morrill home on Waterville’s Winter Street.<\/p>\n
Not until 1891 did anyone Colby Class produce three distinguished scholars.<\/p>\n
In this single class were men who gained national recognition in three fields of scholarship: geology, philosophy and literature. Edward Mathews, a native of Portland, took his Ph. D. degree at Johns Hopkins University, where he was a member of the geology department for thirty years. He studied also at Munich and Heidelberg, was for ten years State Geologist of Maryland, and was the author of eleven books and numerous articles. Not all of his writings concerned technical geology. One carried the interesting title “History of the Mason-Dixon Line”. Arthur Kenyon Rogers was long Professor of Philosophy at Yale. When I was a student at Colby, we used Rogers’ “Student’s History of Philosophy” as a textbook in a course taught by President Arthur Roberts, who had graduated from Colby in the hgclass just ahead of Rogers, in 1890. The third scholar was Adelbert Caldwell, for 25 years Professor of English Literature at DePauw University in Indiana. After graduating from Colby, Caldwell had spent a year at Balliol College, Oxford, had taken a graduate degree at Harvard, and had done research at the British Museum.<\/p>\n
On that day in the last week of June in 1891, when President Albion Woodbury Small handed diplomas to 27 young men and three young women, the brilliant future careers of Johnson, Bassett, Smith, Mathews, Rogers and Caldwell could hardly have been predicted. It is interesting. however. to note what the class prophet did predict. for that prophet was none other than Franklin Johnson. and his graduation prophecy was printed in its entirety in that July third issue of the Waterville Mail.<\/p>\n
Frank Johnson’s class prophecy was of the conventional pattern, depicting his classmates years ahead. Johnson took for his scene a supposed class reunion twenty years hence in 1911. Believe me, when one graduates from college, twenty years seems a long time ahead. but when one, like me. has been out of college for more than fifty years, twenty years ago seems only yesterday. How did Frank Johnson, in 1891, visualize his classmates in that distant future year of 1911? He pictured Caldwell. not as a literary scholar. but as the most noted chiropodist in Boston.<\/p>\n
Bassett was not a lawyer and future judge, but a professor at Colby. Illsley was pictured as a civil engineer, head of the engineering corps of a great transcontinental railroad. Johnson did hit the nail on the head about Mathews, whom he depicted as a professional geologist. Philosopher Rogers, however, was to prophet Johnson, a business man. In Johnson’s prediction William Abbott Smith was not a clergyman, but a professional actor. Johnson said, “For ten years Smith has been on the stage. Smith’s Celebrated Minstrels have great popularity with the public.'” As for himself, Johnson had this to say as he closed his prophecy: “As the train bore me raPidly homeward the next morning, I mused over the frailty of human nature and was disposed to prefer my own lot, a bachelor physician of forty, to that of any of my classmates.”<\/p>\n
Of course in 1911 Johnson was neither a bachelor nor a physician. But on one point he was uncannily accurate. He had placed that bachelor physician in Chicago, and that is exactly where he was as head of the noted University of Chicago High School.<\/p>\n
Although most of that issue of the Waterville Mail in July, 1891 was devoted to the Colby Commencement, the editors did find space for a few other items of local news. C.H. “Hod” Nelson had been reinstated by the American Trotting Association. “Hod”, owner of the famous trotter Nelson, who would soon hold the world’s record, had been suspended for illegal driving at Grand Rapids. and his reinstatement was widely heralded by his Waterville friends.<\/p>\n
The Waterville City Council had contracted for the paving of Main Street with granite blocks from P.O. Square to Temple Street. That may be confusing to present day citizens of Waterville, ‘for it meant from what is now Castonguay Square to Temple Street. The post office was then on Common Street, not in what is now called Post Office Square.<\/p>\n
The circus had come to town just as the Mail was going to press. It caused the editor to insert this paragraph: “This morning, as the Barnum and Bailey circus was being unloaded at the railroad crossing on Pleasant Street, Mr. G. L. Weeks’ horse took fright at one of the large wagons and ran away, leaving the buggy bottom side up in the street. Mr. Weeks’ clothes were soiled, but he sustained no serious injury. ”<\/p>\n
Good Will at Hinckley was in the news that July day in 1891. The Mail said: “Last Monday, June 29, was a good day for almost anything, but it was a day especially adapted to an excursion. So it proved to the officers and friends of the Good Will Farm Association, for it was the day of their annual meeting. The train left Waterville at 10 and was heavily loaded with men, women and children bound for the Farm. We were greeted at the station by Supt. George Hinckley and the boys. Needed changes have been made in both Good Will and Sunshine cottages, while funds have been raised for a new cottage soon to be built. The new farm, west of the buildings, is nearly complete, and will be a welcome addition.”<\/p>\n
By this time my listeners know that I cannot leave an account of any newspaper without reference to its ads. They are indeed always revealing of the time and place. What do the ads tell us about Waterville in 1891?<\/p>\n
Mark Gallert, at the sign of the Gold Box, was offering ladies’ kid lined, Dongola boots for $4.50, and patent French calf shoes for men at $3.50. L. H. Soper was featuring parasols. C. E. Mathews had just got in a carload of Best Family Flour, which he was selling for $6.50 a barrel. His ad said: “Try one barrel and you’ll get five more, because you know you can’t equal soon again this price and quality.” Wardwell Bros. were selling Marseilles quilts for a dollar each. Dolloff and Dunham asked you to come in and take your pick of a straw hat for one dollar. Dorr’s Drug Store was featuring as hot weather specialties Dalmatian insect powder, poison fly paper and root beer extract. Miss Sarah Blaisdell was offering stylish bonnets and Mouzquetaire kid gloves, and Sebastian Vose announced that he had the best photograph rooms anywhere on the river.<\/p>\n
And with that we must say goodbye until next week.<\/p>\n
Year: 1964<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #611, Broadcast on April 19, 1964<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42956,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8392"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}