[podcast]http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/scimport\/files\/2011\/05\/LT1128.mp3[\/podcast]<\/p>\n
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Somehow I cannot let you fo:rget that my academic career at Colby’ – that is the teaching I did while devoting most of my time to administration, was concerned with the English language, its history, its changing vocabulary, and its .expressive use. So, from time to time, this program has had something to say about word origins, and about especially pungent and memorable proverbs, say~ngs and expressions.<\/p>\n
An ingenious user of our language was the dramatic critic and writer, the late Alexander Woolcott. So let us start this broadcast with a few of his best quips. Here’s one we should all take’ to heart: “if a jackass goes travelling, he doesn’t come home a horse.”<\/em><\/p>\n Here’s another: “People of unique ability are unique charac ters. It is only when they try to act like the rest of us that they seem artificial.” <\/em><\/p>\n Or take this’ one: . “Ninety percent of the stuff told you in confidence you can’t get anyone else to listen to.”<\/em><\/p>\n When Woolcott was unlucky with some of his investments he exclaimed: “A stockbroker is a man who runs your fortune.into a shoestring.”<\/em><\/p>\n Woolcott could be extremely caustic in some of his dramatic criticism. Of a famous American actress he wrote:<\/p>\n “Mrs. Campbell is an aged American battleship, sinking rapidly, and firing every gun at her reseuers.” <\/em><\/p>\n And of a new dramatic performance:<\/p>\n “An unfortunate thing occured at the Maxine Eliot theatre last night – the play itself.”<\/em><\/p>\n When Woolcott learned that the poet Archibald MacLeish was not poverty stricken, but had inherited a fortune, he. said:<\/p>\n “This is indeed remarkable. There’s as much chance of finding a rich poet as there is of finding a naked Santa Claus.”<\/em><\/p>\n When someone accused Woolcott of lacking good taste, he said:.<\/p>\n “You don’t ask a color – -blind man to match samples.”<\/em><\/p>\n The actress Jane Cowl once said to him:<\/p>\n “I can be a star one night and awalk-on the next.” “Yes,” said Woolcott, “but I know the tray you’ll be carrying. It has John the Baptist’s head on it.”<\/em><\/p>\n One night Woolcott, emerging\u00b7 from the Algonquin Theatre saw a man in uniform and asked him,<\/p>\n “Will you get me a taxi, my good man?”<\/em><\/p>\n The uniformed man replied, ”Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m an Admiral in the U.S. Navy.”<\/em><\/p>\n “Perfectly all right,” quipped Woolcott, “just get me a battleship.”<\/em><\/p>\n I am often asked what became of that last steamboat on the Upper Kennebec, the “City of Waterville. ” I have already told you how a celebrating group of citizens went to Bangor and rode on the first voyage of that boat from the shipyard in Brewer, where it was built, to its home port, Waterville, staying oveT.night at Bath, .then arriving the next afternoon in Winslow Bay only to be stranded on a sandbar, and have the passengers brought ashore in row boats. Before that trip, the last steamboat to operate between Gardiner and Waterville had been laid up in 1874, and for the next 16 years there was no steam traffic on the river above Augusta. Then, in 1890, under the leadership of the Waterville lawyer, William T. Haines, a group of merchants and professional men raised the capital to form the Merchants’ Steamboat Company and contracted for the construction in Brewer of a steamer to carry freight and passengers between Gardiner and Waterville. The design was called a wheelbarrow boat with big side wheels. She was 75 feet long, 19 feet wide. Loaded, she took only two feet of water, and her crew boasted that she could float on a thick fog. On her first trip down river after her arrival in Waterville, her bow was smashed at the Augusta dam and she was nearly drawn into the falls. But, quickly repaired, she made the trip back from Gardiner to Waterville with 15 tons of freight, and kept clear of all the snags.<\/p>\n The City of Waterville operated only two seasons on the Kennebec. By that time she was declared an unprofitable venture, and was sold to a company in Baltimore that used her for runs on Chesapeake Bay. What finally happened to her and when, we do not know.<\/p>\n Now I want to call your attention to another subject, the historical importance of the Kennebec River Basin. It is a huge territory of Maine, 145 miles long and 75 miles wide, comprising within the area 5800 square miles. Tide comes up the river as far as Augusta .From there- the rise to the outlet at Moosehead Lake is 1023 feet. From Augusta to Ticonic Falls the rise is gradual, totaling 36 feet, but the steep falls at Waterville and the rips above make an additional rise of 40 feet before one reaches the bridges at Fairfield. By the time one gets to the top of the falls at Madison, he has ascended 233 feet above the level at Augusta:<\/p>\n Detailed information about water power in the Kennebec Basin is contained in a book called “Water Power of Maine,” published in 1869. Note what that book says about Ticonic Falls.<\/p>\n “A continuous ledge of hard slate crosses the river diagonally, presenting a well defined crest em which the dam is located. The ledge extends into the bank above and below the falls, and offers the best possible foundation for structures. The first dam was built in 1793, but a higher one replaced it in 1869, making possible a head of water of 20 feet. More than 1,200,000 feet of lumber were used in its construction, and it is ballasted with stone. Here the river is divided into two sections by an island. On the Waterville side the channel extends close to the bank, forming a grand canal, connecting with which are four raceways, only one of which can accommodate a mill of the size of Bates in Lewiston. The dam is altogether 170 feet long, and it cost $40,000.”<\/em><\/p>\n The book tells us that the swift water above Ticonic Falls was called College Rapids because Colby College was then located on the west bank. There the bed drops ten feet in less than an eighth of a mile. The Ticonic Falls water privilege was in 1869 owned by the Ticonic Water Power Manufacturing Co. The company had.4.00 acres of land abutting on the river for a mile on each side. In 1869 that company operated at Ticonic Falls a grist mill; a plaster mill; a door, sash and blind factory; a saw mill; and a large factory for furniture. The book declared, “Water power at Waterville on the Kennebec is ~anked among the best in New England.”<\/em><\/p>\n At Fairfield Village the power rights were controlled by the Kendalls Mills Water Power Co., where a dam gave a fall of 22 feet \u00b7and made possible year-round operation of several mills” At Somerset Mills, now Shawmut, there was another dam, creating enough power to allow operation of seven sawmills, of which two were owned by the Lawrence family.<\/p>\n At the outlet of Martin Stream, where is now located the Hinckley School, another dam permitted operation of four sawmills and a tannery. Winslow was not without water power, largely because of the Outlet Stream from China Lake to the Sebasticook. At the outlet, where now is the Massey Mill, .there was already a . large sawmill in 1869. At what is now known as the Lombard Dam on the Outlet Stream was a chandler mill. Then at North Vassalboro was a big dam with four factories, including the John Lang woolen mill. At the outlet of Pattee’s Pond were a grist mill and a shingle mill, and at the Webber Pond outlet a saw mill.<\/p>\n In 1869 the dam on \u00b7the Sebasticook near its outlet in Winslow had not been built, but the book said:<\/p>\n “There is no fall between the mouth of the Sebasticook and Benton Falls, but a fine dam could be built near the mouth, making profitable mills for the village that has developed around Fort Halifax.”<\/em><\/p>\n We know that the proposed dam was built and still stands behind the Woodbury garage. The old book tells us about a dozen river sites on the Seba~ticook above Benton, all of them with one or more mills, the largest of which were the Hunter mills at Clinton.<\/p>\n As I have often told you on this program, Waterville grew much faster than Winslow because of the water power of the Messalonskee. In 1869 there were 8 factories on that stream in Oakland and 10 more between the Oakland – Fairfield line and the stream’s outlet into the Kennebec. Think of it – in 1869 there were 18 manufacturing plants on the Messalonskee Stream. The most important were the Dunn Edge Tool Co. in Oakland, the wood working factories and the tannery at Crommett’s Mills, where the stream crosses Waterville’s l>J’estern Avenue; the iron foundry of Webber and Haviland below the bridge that crosses the present Kennedy Drive; amd a paper mill operated by G. S. Monroe that ran night and day.<\/p>\n But I must not bore you further with those statements. Suffice it to say that all the way up the river above Fairfield there were in 1869 numerous mills on both the Kennebec-itself and on tributary streams, especially its largest tributary, the Sandy River \u2022. Believe it or not, a hundred years ago, the entire Kennebec River Basin had in operation more than a thousand mills.<\/p>\n Half a century ago, when Herbert Carlyle Libby was in. charge of public speaking at Colby, debating was prominent at the college. In 1920 one of his debating teams made a cross-country trip that gave the college a great deal of publicity. They travelled- 2000 miles from Waterville, debating on a scale never before attained at Colby. The national public speaking society Pi Kappa Delta was holding its annual convention at SimpsOn College, Indianola, Iowa, and the Colby chapter was determined to be represented. To make such a trip even more worth-while, Dr. Libby arranged Clebates with a number of colleges besides the few in which the Colby team would engage while at the convention.<\/p>\n From a large group of competitors four Colby men were selected to make the trip, two of them well known in subsequent years in the Waterville area. Those two were Clyde Russell of Winslow, long Executive Secretary of the Maine Teachers Association, and Leonard Mayo, who after a nationally recognized career in social service, returned to Colby as Professor of Human Development, and until his retirement made his home in Waterville. The other two members of that four-man team were Forrest Royal and George Wolstenholme. The latter, a ministerial student, was one of the finest public speakers ever, produced at Colby.<\/p>\n On this trip they engaged in eight debates, winning six. They wer,e defeated only by Notre Dame and Berea in Kentucky. They won from Western Reserve in Cleveland, from Kalamazoo, from Hedding College in Illinois, from Simpson, from Blue Ridge College in Maryland, and from the second oldest college in the U. S., William and Mary in Virginia.<\/p>\n On April 12, 1922 the Colby Echo reported this headline:<\/p>\n “Debating Team Returns from Triumphant Western Trip. Whole College Turns out to Greet Them at the Station.”,<\/em><\/p>\n And with that tribute to an important colTege activity half a century ago, we say Goodby until next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1128, Broadcast on May 29, 1977<\/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":[35314],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9711"}],"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=9711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}