<\/p>\n
I recently examined a graduation program of Coburn Classical Institute for the year 1902, 76 years ago. That was when the man who became the Father of Mayflower Hill was the Coburn principal. In 1902 Franklin Johnson did not even dream of ever being a part in moving Colby College to a new site. He had graduated from Colby only eleven years earlier and after a successful tenure as principal of Calais Academy he accepted the principalship of the school, over which Dr. Hansen had presided for nearly half a century.<\/p>\n
Like all Coburn graduations for many years, the exercises in 1902 were held in the First Baptist Church just across the Park from the Coburn building that had been the magnificent gift of Governor Abner Coburn in the 1880s. The date of that 1902 graduation was June 20. It seems that the celebrated musician R. B. Hall not only conducted his famous band, but also had an orchestra. And that orchestra furnished the music for the Coburn graduation.<\/p>\n
In recent years many secondary schools as well as colleges have been accustomed to have guest speakers for commencement, but that was not the custom 76 years ago. The program was a long one, for 13 members of the graduating class were speakers. A patient audience must have been glad of the relief furnished intermittently by the Hall orchestra.<\/p>\n
Thirty-two Coburn seniors received their diplomas. They came from all parts of Maine, though about one-third lived in the Waterville area. They came from towns as far apart as Shapleigh in York and Ashland in Aroostook. Two graduates had their homes on the island of Islesboro and one had the historical name of Benjamin Franklin Williams.<\/p>\n
Well remembered by our older people were three of the Waterville graduates. Two were girls: Helen Springfield and Grace Stetson. Grace’s family lived on Marston Road behind the present Colby campus on Mayflower Hill. She became a prominent Maine teacher and very active in the Maine Teachers Association.<\/p>\n
One of the boys became well known to Colby students because, while practicing law in Waterville, he was regularly the grand marshall at Colby commencements. He was Harold Leon Pepper, for several years commander of Waterville’s militia company. My own acquaintance with him began in 1912, when as a Colby junior I was appointed the undergraduate marshal for that year’s commencement.<\/p>\n
I well remember Pepper’s initial instructions to me. He said, “There will be complaints about the commencement procession and other functions. There always are. If a complainer comes to me, I’ll tell him to see Marriner. If he comes to you, you tell him to see Pepper. If he catches us together we refer him to the Trustees of Colby College.”<\/p>\n
Just one Coburn graduate on that June day in 1902 achieved national fame. He was John Wesley Coombs, still regarded as the best baseball pitcher on any Colby team. After graduation from Colby in 1906, he was selected by the famous Connie Mack to join the pitching staff of the Philadelphia Athletics. For several years he was Mack’s leading pitcher and in a single world series pitched all 18 innings of a long game against Boston and finally won it.<\/p>\n
After retiring from the Athletics, Jack Coombs turned out many young players as coach of baseball at Duke University. One of those was John Winkin, long coach of baseball at Colby and now at the University of Maine.<\/p>\n
Coburn indeed was quite a school under Franklin Johnson in 1902.<\/p>\n
Now for another favorite subject of mine – old almanacs. Besides the standard almanacs of very long life, like the Farmer’s Almanac for all New England and its almost equally ancient Maine Farmer’s Almanac, it used to be the custom for various patent medicine companies to issue their own. One I had not seen until a few months ago was called Seven Barks, an almanac for the year 1905. On the cover were pictures of seven different heads of dogs, but it was not their barks to which the title referred. Rather it meant different kinds of tree and bush bark used in the concoction which its manufacturer called Seven Barks. The same man, Lyman Brown of Boston, made Globe Pills for headaches. He insisted that both Seven Barks and Globe Pills were not only effective but pleasant to take. On one page of the almanac Brown tells how he journeyed to Germany to see a celebrated physician at Wiesbaden on the Rhine, and secured from him a recipe for making extract of hydrangea with its remarkable healing powers. This is what Brown said the German doctor told him, “l one day directed my student to put acetic acid on the roots of hydrangea instead of using the customary spirits of wine. I was about to throw it away when I recalled how certain vinegars were ancient remedies. So I tried this oil and it worked remarkably.”.<\/p>\n
Brown says he stayed several weeks with the German doctor and became convinced of the efficacy of that accidental discovery. It was the bark of the hydrangea bush, Brown said, that was the essential ingredient of his Seven Barks. The six other barks that went into it were important, but it was the hydrangea that was all-essential.<\/p>\n
In 1902 nobody had what is today called arthritis. What a lot of elderly people suffered from was Rheumatism, popularly called “rheumatiz.” Brown’s almanac had something to say about it: “It isn’t necessary to say much about rheumatism. People who have it know how it feels, and those who don’t have it don’t want to know. The seeds of poisonous acids get into the blood, then lodge in the muscles and joints. The only cure is to purify the blood, stimulate the liver, kidneys and skin into a healthy state and thus get rid of the poison. That is exactly what Seven Barks does, but it won’t do it in a day. Take that medication and stick to it until a cure is wrought. Old cases are often slow, and are especially enfeebling in people who don’t take care of themselves. But have perseverance and Seven Barks will make you well.”<\/p>\n
Even in 1978 medical science has found no cure for the common cold, but the manufacturer of Seven Barks in 1902 knew just what to do for it. He said: “When you catch cold, there is some weakness in the nervous system. Too much blood goes to throat, nose and bronchial tubes, causing congestion. You don’t need narcotics or cough mixtures. What you need is to get the blood circulating properly. Do it with Seven Barks. Catching cold is like the stopping of a watch. A watch stops when it needs cleaning. So does your blood too, gets dirty and needs cleaning. So do your stomach and bowels. That is what Seven Barks is for.”<\/p>\n
Yes indeed, I tell you there was a lot in the old almanacs besides astronomical observations and weather predictions.<\/p>\n
Some of my listeners will remember that the Waterville Sentinel used to print a box headed “Ten Years Ago in Waterville.” Mrs. Richard Delano of Winslow has sent me a copy of the box which appeared on May 23, 1917, referring of course to the same day and month in 1907, almost 71 years ago. Waterville H. S. had beaten Gardiner at baseball 8 to 6. Some of us remember well the street sprinkler that laid the dust on Waterville’s unpaved streets at that time, but I’m still not sure what the objects were to which the Sentinel referred in this statement: “Standpipes in addition to those already in place were being put up for the new street sprinklers.” The Waterville and Fairfield Street Railway was building a steel bridge with concrete piers over Holland Brook on College Avenue near the Woodbury place. At Waterville H. S., Clarence Whittaker was elected editor of the school publication, the Nautilus. On his editorial board was one of the Soper girls, Lucille, later wife of Alton Blake. Faculty consultant was the submaster John Partridge, a Colby graduate, who would later have a distinguished career as principal of Caribou H. S.<\/p>\n
One of Maine’s most famous artists was Paul Akers, and he certainly deserved mention on this program. Born in Norway, Maine in 1825, by the time of the Civil War Akers was studying sculpture, as an already recognized artist, in Rome. It was in 1858, in a visit to Rome that Nathaniel Hawthorne first saw a statue created by Akers, and the result was Hawthorne’s novel, “The Marble Faun.” Then Hawthorne was especially impressed with. a bust of Milton that Akers had wrought. Of it Hawthorne wrote : “In another style there was a grand, calm head of Milton, not copied from any other bust or portrait; yet more authoritative than any of them. The sculptor has spiritualized his marble with the poet’s mighty genius. This was a mighty achievement coming such a length of time after the dry bones of Milton had been long in the grave.”<\/p>\n
Paul Akers started to be a printer, going from his native Norway to Portland to work on the old Portland Transcript. Then he spent a winter in Boston, where he learned plaster casting for he was already determined to become a sculptor. Even before he left Norway,he had cut a portrait in marble with a carpenter’s chisel, though at that time he had never seen a portrait in bas relief. Returning to Portland he set up a studio where he made portraits of Henry W. Longfellow and Longfellow’s wealthy father-in-law Samuel Appleton. Then he made his first visit to Italy, where he spent nearly a year. Returning to the States, he spent a winter in Washington where he made busts of President Franklin Pierce, the orator Edward Everett,and General Sam Houston. His increasing fame caused him to open a commodious studio in Rome, and it was there that he fashioned his bust of Milton. He also made a celebrated bust of Cicero, which was placed in the Vatican. One of his best works was the Pearl Diver, representing a young man stretched on a sea-worn rock wrapped in sleep eternal, for he has lost his life in gathering the shells in the net about his waist. That figure by Akers is property of the City of Portland.<\/p>\n
As for the bust of Milton, made famous by Hawthorne, it has long been in possession of Colby College, and is one of the prized items in the Colby Art Gallery on Mayflower Hill.<\/p>\n
Year: 1978<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1163, Broadcast on April 30, 1978<\/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":[35316,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9806"}],"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=9806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}