College of New Rochelle - Annales Yearbook (New Rochelle, NY)

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year consisted in unorganized hilarity which it better becomes the dignity of the first class to leave in oblivion. There was a Tennyson evening, however, and some real musicales. Father McLoughlin, always the staunch friend of 1908, occasionally came of an evening to regale us with beautiful music. There were lectures, too. Father Halpin, then a stranger to us, gave a talk one Saturday morning. It was truly inspiring. We did not dare dream then that we could have him as a teacher and chaplain! When warm weather came, we had a straw ride. Reverend Mother Irene had given her permission for the affair but I don’t think she had the faintest conception of the degree of rusticity involved. She looked so astonished when she saw her young ladies jauntily ensconced in a hay-wagon! But the permission held and it was a glorious straw ride — a moonlight picnic moving along the shores of the Sound. No one who was there will ever forget it! The last days of Pioneer year will always call up to my mind the first Quarterly. Few publications have, I think, been more conscientiously edited. There were conferences for months between the editors, who were Mary McDonnell, Anna McLoughlin and the humble author of these reminiscences and Mother Augustine and Mr. Nelson Hume. Whatever the financial status of the present Quarterly, the first edition, at least, looked more prosperous. It was de luxe in every respect except contents. Fat cherubs, who looked as lf milk and honey had agreed with them, disported themselves about the College seal. The title in Old English surmounted this device and the whole was printed on heavy art paper in pale blue and bound with blue silk cords. Inside were painfully labored essays on abstruse subjécts. Each small literary craft steered out of the safe port of one irreproachable quotation through the perilous breakers of Exposition into the welcome haven of another two line sentiment, preferably verse. But no one will ever know the vast labor of love that went into that first Quarterly. We were ten, all told, and it was a brave undertaking for so small a group. It would have been impossible save for the fact that Mother Augustine’s boundless courage and cheerful common-sense stood behind us. For most of us, Mother Augustine was the College and 1908 would have gone through more than editorial throes to prove itself worthy of Mother Augustine s faith. A word is due here to the wonderful efforts of our first dean, Reverend Mother Irene. Few of us will forget just how Herculean was her work as founder nor the tender thoughtfulness she showed each Pioneer. She was very proud of our Quarterly. The printing-press and pioneer days do not go together, and with the first college publication the old times ended. When another term began, the college had reached a vigorous childhood, and the anxious period was safely past. Mary Curran, ’08. • Page Twenty-two