<\/p>\n
This is the final regular broadcast of the season for Little Talks. In September we shall resume the program for its nineteenth consecutive year. Meanwhile during the summer WTVL, in recognition of its own 20th anniversary, will repeat some of the most popular broadcasts of Little Talks that have been made during the past 18 years.<\/p>\n
Since today sees the graduation of the 145th class to receive diplomas at Colby College, let us begin this program with reference to a Colby graduation half a century ago. In those days the ceremonies were usually held in the First Baptist Church on Elm Street, but it was just about that time that the church proved too small and the exercises were transferred to the City Opera House.<\/p>\n
Today the exercises on Mayflower Hill are preceded by a dignified academic procession. Fifty years ago that procession was a street parade. Preceded by a brass band, the procession marched from the old campus down College Avenue and Main Street to the City Hall. Directly behind the band marched the trustees, with the chairman escorting the Governor of Maine. Then came the faculty in order of rank and seniority, with the venerable Professor Julian Taylor in the lead. Behind the faculty marched the senior class in cap and gown. In earlier years students of other classes followed the seniors, but some time after the turn of the century that practice was abandoned, and all underclassmen, except a few kept for ushers and waiters, departed for home before the three-day program of Commencement got under way. While underclassmen were lacking in the procession, alumni were still a part of it. Behind the seniors the graduates attending commencement lined up by classes, with the oldest in front.<\/p>\n
Today few people except those directly connected with the college attend a Colby Commencement. Fifty years ago it was by no means the public attraction it had been a hundred years ago. At that time people came in buggies and even in farm wagons from many miles around. But even in the years just before America’s entrance into World War I, many Waterville citizens who had no connection with Commencement, either as trustee or alumnus or parent, made it an annual practice to attend the graduation exercises. Admission to the church, and later to the Opera House, was by ticket, and the Chairman of the Commencement Committee had a difficult time rationing those tickets. When I took over the job from Professor Herbert Libby in 1925, he told me it would be safe to issue two tickets for very seat available after the reservations had been allotted on the floor of the house for those in the procession.<\/p>\n
Libby said: “You will find that about one in every two ticket holders never shows up”. He proved to be right, and all went fairly smoothly despite the demand for tickets.<\/p>\n
Now let us see who were some of the local boys and girls who received their Colby diplomas exactly fifty years ago in 1916. One of them was Cyril M. Joly who would later serve notably as Judge of the Waterville Municipal Court. Another was Harvey D. Eaton, Jr., popularly known as Dwane Eaton, who would have a celebrated career in the U.S. Army Engineers and in his retirement make his home in the family’s ancestral community at Cornville, Maine. Then there was Leon Herring of Fairfield, who would be one of the best known and most beloved physicians of the Kennebec, with his home for many years in Winthrop. Another was Lewis Lester Levine, a prominent Waterville attorney and real estate owner, and donor of the Levine Public Speaking prizes at Colby.<\/p>\n
In the Class of 1916 was one of the most popular teachers ever to hold classes at Waterville High School, Miss Alice Clarkin. Since her retirement. Miss Clarkin has been a faithful, hard-working member of the trustees of the public library, and for several years has served as its vice-president. Another was Frances Trefethen, daughter of Colby’s professor of Mathematics and editor of the Maine Farmer’s Almanac. From Clinton came Edith Pratt, who, like her sister, Eva Pratt Owen, has held a distinguished place in Maine education through the years.<\/p>\n
On that June day in 1916 President Arthur J. Roberts handed diplomas to 55 men and 35 women. a total of 90. Fortunately a goodly number of them are still living and many are here in Waterville on this weekend, to observe the 50th anniversary of their Colby graduation.<\/p>\n
It is one of those 1916 Colby graduates, my friend Judge Cyril Joly, who has called my attention to a distinction due the town of Fairfield that I fear has been all too generally forgotten. Judge Joly recently spent some time in Florida, where he took occasion to visit at the Fort Myers estate built by Thomas A. Edison and now preserved as a memorial to the great inventor. When Judge Joly opened the attractive illustrated folder of information about the house, he immediately saw the following statement: “The home and breezeway-connected guest house were the first prefabricated buildings in America. Mr. Edison drew the plans and had them built in sections at Fairfield, Maine in 1885. They were transported to Florida in four schooners.”<\/p>\n
Now can anyone help us find out what company or what persons in Fairfield built Mr. Edison’s prefabricated Florida houses eighty years ago? If possible, I want to find all about this transaction. not only who were the builders, but why Mr. Edison turned to them for the job. If I succeed in this quest, I’ll tell you all about it when we return to the air next fall.<\/p>\n
Connected with the Florida estate are the Edison Laboratory and the Edison tropical gardens. In the laboratory Edison did his experiments on goldenrod as a source of natural rubber.<\/p>\n
The Edison gardens contain some of the world’s most unusual plants, trees and shrubs. He brought royal palms from Cuba and giant bamboo from China. Brilliant flowering vines, huge tulip trees, and beds of exotic blooms are spread over the grounds in profusion.<\/p>\n
Several times on this program I have referred to the scurrilous publication called the War Cry that was annually put out by each sophomore class at Colby at the turn of the century, and that caused the notorious student strike of 1903. During the years when the publication first appeared in the form of so-called False Orders in the 1870’s. until it disappeared soon after World War I, the paper carried different names. In the late 1880’s it was known as the Ah Skyward Clarion. Just as through all the other years, the issue of 1887 was the work of the sophomores of the Class of 1889, but the paper’s masthead put up the pretense that the women were responsible. It said: “Published Annually by the Co-eds of the Ah Skyward Society”.<\/p>\n
A sort of foreward editorial was addressed “To the Gentle Reader”. It said: “Once more the sound of the Clarion is heard in the land. With notes now mighty as Prexy’s foot, now sweet as Johnnie’s tobacco, now tender as Cosine’s ‘naows’ and ”haows’, now grim as Judy’s smile, now languid as Teddy himself, now fresh as the Class of 1890, the freshest of the fresh — it in— itself along the air like a snake in the grass.<\/p>\n
Now let us see who were the persons whose nicknames filled that editorial paragraph. Prexy was the Colby President, George Dana Boardman Pepper, of whom it can surely be said that his kind heart was just as big as his notoriously big feet. Johnnie was John B. Foster, Professor of Greek, and first of the long line of Colby Fosters. Cosine was the Professor of Mathematics, Laban E. Warren. Judy was, of course, Julian D. Taylor, Professor of Latin, who would still be an active member of the Colby faculty more than forty years after that 1887 publication, and who at that time had already been Colby’s Latin professor for nearly twenty years. He was to have the distinction of holding one of the longest continuous teaching records in any American college, a total of 62 years.<\/p>\n
Teddy was the Colby librarian and professor of modern languages, Edward Winslow Hall. He too was to enjoy a long career at Colby. Graduating from the college in 1862, he spent the war years in the War Department in Washington, was the first Colby professor to study at a foreign university, and was on the college staff for 40 years, from 1866 to 1906; and in the four remaining years of his life, though retired, kept in close touch with college affairs from his home in Waterville.<\/p>\n
The 1887 Clarion was a four page sheet, the two inner pages of which were devoted to an outrageously burlesqued account of an entertainment. The headline said: “Whoop! Grand Entertainment in the Junior. Under the Auspices of the Colby Faculty. Presentation of the Farce ‘The Freshman Reading’.”<\/p>\n
Now there is one term in that headline that needs explanation — the Junior. When we learn what it was, we realize just how low these criminal publications could sometimes descend. After the bUilding of Memorial Hall in 1869, the authorities decided to put up, a few rods east of it, nearer the river bank, a neat little structure built of stones left over from the erection of this larger building. In those days before the coming of bathrooms or even of indoor toilets, the little wooden outhouse was a familiar structure behind almost every home. Some such dilapidated edifice had accomodated Colby men for half a century until the neater little building was erected from the same stone that went into Memorial Hall. Not unnaturally the new latrine was called Memorial Hall Junior, a title that within a few years had been shortened to simply “The Junior”. So the Clarion was decidedly uncomplimentary when it said that an entertainment under the auspices of the faculty would be put on in the Junior.<\/p>\n
As an opening number the paper said that Gymnastic Nondescript Hurd would turn cartwheels on the stage. The reference was to George N. Hurd, generally called by fellow students “cowboy”, because he hailed from Denver, Colorado. He would later be a prominent attorney, a law officer in the Philippines and a Judge of its Superior Court. Then followed a recitation by Jabbering Egotistical Burke. That was Jeremiah E. Burke, an Irishman from Frankfort, Maine, who would later win fame as Boston’s superintendent of schools.<\/p>\n
The paper then said: “Horse Power Knight will pose on the stage and give an exhibition of his trained horses, which are said to be able to translate Horace. He spends his days in warbling sweet ditties, his evenings in quiet games of poker, and his Sundays on the Plains. The fellow was Harlan P. Knight, who spent only one year at Colby and whb could not-be traced ~t ~ll when the alumni catalogue was published in 1920. “Be sure to see”, said the Clarion, “the chin-chopper dance executed by the faculty”. After that number, Washerwoman Carey from Aroostook would sing a touching song. That was Walter Carey, who became a well-known Houlton lawyer. Other members of the Class of 1890 held up to ridicule were Melvin Smith, a New Hampshire fellow, who was heralded as Mud-Washer Smith; Peter B. Merchant from Weld, who was called Pea Bean Merchant; Willard R. Curtis of Kennebunk, who was described as White Ribbon Curtis; Arthur Patten from Bowdoinham, who would become a famous preacher and writer in the Far West. In 1887 the Clarion called him All Busted Patten, the Human Snake.<\/p>\n
It was all very crude, that attempt at humor in 1887. But I assure you it wasn’t any better a quarter of a century later when my class at Colby produced its own version of the annual scandal sheet.<\/p>\n
And so we come to the end of the 18th year of Little Talks on Common Things, but we intend to be back again in September. Until then, Goodbye for Old Times’ Sake.<\/p>\n
Year: 1966<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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