Lawrenceville School - Olla Podrida Yearbook (Lawrenceville, NJ)

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QTQEIIH i,BuUtiDa HEAD MASTEIFS MESSAGE O speak to the graduating class in cold type is a risky business. What I have had to say to you orally you have quickly forgotten, with no opportunity to note its imperfections or irrelevancies. Some of you, indeed, have cultivated the technique of not listening to it at all, while preserving outwardly an air of rapt attention. The printed word, however, pauses, permits itself to be examined a second time. The pitfalls of this valedictory are, therefore, acute. So I serve notice that this essay in farewell is struck off because Editor Stovall, at some risk of perjury, declared he really wanted it, and because it is pleasant to retrieve from memory my moments with a company of friends. You and I have faced each other countless times in conference and chapel, and it would be curiously interesting to know what, on those public occasions, we have been thinking of each other. I hasten to say that my own reflections have been largely complimentary, I have expended nervous energy, to be sure, in the attempt to glare into more seemly bearing the gum-chewers, the chatters, and the more con- spicuously sleepyg and in so doing, I am told, have at times sent shudders up the spines of innocent and attentive neighbors. But this was just routine police work, resented by none. I have to thank you more than once for bearing with dull lecturers and long-distance preachers, whom you have treated with a courtesy which they did not deserve, but which made me proud of you. But it is, of course, in your moments of relaxation that I remember you with keenest pleasure. Altman, Ashley, Barrie, and Peters have done much to give me a just perception of the California climate, which they assure me is seldom what it seems. Boydis addiction to afternoon tea has won my admiration, and so has Singer's, who has been my strong ally in a preference for iced tea over hot, it has been stimulat- ing to match quips with Norris, to admire the exploits of that perennial valedictorian, Murchison. I have benefited more than once from Maynard's kindly advice on the management of the School. I have shared with Cunningham the embarrassment of public laryngitis, I have been lost in wonder at the dictatorial efficiency of Patrick at meetings of Pipe and Quill. Low's acting and Strasenburgh's running and Wise's poetry I shall not forget. And these are only random citations from the long and creditable volume which contains your Fifth Form annals. As you must now know, the tone of the School is set by the Fifth Form. It is due, therefore, to your general orderliness and responsiveness that we old hands have been saying that this has been a smooth, pretty untroublesome year. That you have helped to make it so is partly the result of the landslide vote you gave to Bob Wilson for the presidency and to your good judgment in selecting your other officers and directors. I recall fewer emergency conferences with Wilson than with any of his predecessorsg and such crises and civil disturbances as every school year gives rise to have been handled promptly and with no noticeable damage to the general life. Since I could not possibly have gotten along without them, I give my deep thanks now to all the members of the Fifth Form Council. Nine