Fordham University - Maroon Yearbook (New York, NY)

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workmen on the new building, filled with heady draughts of Reverend Professor Cunningham’s oratory, and fortified by a visit to Duffy’s tavern, had left to join die Fenian raid on Canada. Discipline. . . . “Where is that letter again . . .? He fumbled the documents on his desk, reports, letters, archival material of the first twenty-five years of St. John’s College. He had been going through them the past few days to find anecdotes for a Silver Jubilee oration in June. Where had he seen that comment on discipline? It was in a letter from Father John Larkin, the second rector of St. John’s, to his former pupil and lifelong friend, William Gockeln. April i ], 1852 —“We had something of an outbreak, the Sunday before St. Patrick’s Day. A new cook had miscalculated and had not prepared meat enough for the students. The first prefect had also dispensed the other prefects from attendance that day.” “And that was a sorry mistake, I’ll wager,” Father Shea said to himself, anticipating companionship in misery. He continued reading. When the prefect came to Father Larkin to see what could be done about multiplying the food supply, one youth let a potato fly across the refectory at another youth’s head. “This was the signal,” wrote Father Larkin. They began their pranks, throwing potatoes and bread at each other, shouting, etc. I'he larger students tried to stop the disorder. Such among the larger boys who had joined in it, stopped. But all the smaller fry were caught, and punished by being deprived of butter. They got angry. ... It was marble time. They therefore broke a number of panes of glass with their marbles during evening recreation. As almost all had misbehaved on Sunday, I deprived them of St. Patrick’s Day. The middle-sized boys revenged themselves by breaking some more windows. All this, however, without any noise or confusion. So, Father Larkin, the great teacher and administrator, the founder of St. Francis Xavier’s had his troubles. His prelects “were rather bothered and committed blunders loo,” and had to be persuaded that their ideas of “being insulted, or “my authority is despised’ were anti |ualed. Father Shea found much in the voluminous correspondence to support his own view that discipline was largely a matter of understanding; that an excess of inspection, supervision and recrimination was, to say the least, “imprudent.” The struggle of his predecessor to uplift the heterogeneous student body of an earlier day seemed, in the correspondence, herculean. Not only were there academics, debates, philosophical disputations in Latin, prize contests, all excellent pedagogical devices of the Ratio Studiorum, but individual professors lived laborious days curbing and correcting exuberant youth. Father Larkin was accustomed to give lectures to the college at large two or three times a week explaining everything that tended “to correct their foolish notions, their vulgar or ungentlernanly ways.” By laying a solid base of natural virtues he intended to elevate their minds and feelings to the point where matters of piety could be appropriately introduced. Father Larkin had no mercy on the vulgar man, and no hesitation in specifying the fault. “As I tell them,” he wrote, “ ‘It is very hard to make gentlemen of you. You have so long a time kept your thoughts and inclinations in the lowest atmosphere of society that you cannot rise to anything dignified and polished. But I thank God that He has given me the virtue of hope to a high degree, so that your apathy does not dishearten me.’ . . .” Again, after praising the progress of certain departments, the former President had written, “Oh! if I had a proper set of teachers and a few men of tact! Quod possumus, f acini us.” Father Shea shook his head. The more he read of the first days at Fordham the more he felt that their work had been heroic. True the scale was small; the difficulties to be overcome were human obstinacy, the tack of a tradition, faulty preparation, often ignorance. But he would have liked to argue a point or two with Father Larkin. Had they shared a long recreation together he would have said . . . “Now look here father. You wrere in the midst of things and you didn’t quite see what was going on. Those prefects, now, weren’t they attending classes in theology while they were supposed to be watching not only college boys, but little shavers down in the elements? And wasn’t it a miracle indeed that you sur-

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could catch the beginning of a smile. Finally the smile came, a broad one. Father Joseph Shea chuckled audibly and then checked himself from outright laughter. He seemed to realize that the tall, young, serious prefect was more perturbed than his outward composure indicated. He began to polish his glasses. Father Shea found that the way to regain the decorum expected of a rector was to sharpen a pencil, or rearrange an inkwell, or polish his glasses. He had been president of St. John's Colicge now for three years but he was quite certain at last that he could never be as stern as most people hoped he would be. ‘‘So, they have been misbehaving again,” he said. “Yes, Father Rector.” Which ones?” The prefect leaned forward over the desk. All of them.” Isn’t that a shame now,” said Father Shea. “If you would say a word to them in chapel, perhaps ...” “I'll do that tonight. Indeed I will.” Father Shea was always saying a word in chapel. Since the students loved him, perhaps not quite as deeply as he did them, they listened as quietly as nuns on a retreat. They loved him and respected him, but (hey did not fear him. Father Shea was the kind of man who was very much like your father, or your favorite uncle, save that he was obviously holier and more learned. A dozen knocks, a dozen come ins” punctuated his ollice hours. Everyone went to confession to Father Shea. But today he was very anxious to keep to himself and to wade through the mass of documents on his desk. Tonight, he repeated, “I’ll say a word to them. We must have discipline.” The prefect said, “Thank you, Father Rector,” and returned to the battle-lines. Discipline, discipline,” muttered Father Shea to himself. It was hard to maintain discipline. He recalled the time when Father Arthur Jones, professor of Rhetoric, author of the favorite student play, Heartwell at Ham ford, upset discipline for weeks by pitching a 34-32 victory for the Fordham Nine against the Actives. And then there was that affair three years ago when the 25 Bishop Hughes welcoming the Jesuits to Fordham in 1846.

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Statue of Archbishop John Hughes, Founder of Fordham; gift of the Alumni on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of the College. 7