Goucher College - Donnybrook Fair Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

Page 24 text:

last examination passed, the students concerned held a meeting and decided upon the fate of Lounsbury forever. A solemn funeral was arranged on the assumption that Lounsbury was dead. At twilight the procession marched in cap and gown, drums muffled, and amidst dirges, in front of Bennett Hall. There, amidst orations and wails, the cremation of Lounsbury took place. HThey invited me to attend? Professor Butler told me in sorrow; iiThey even asked me for my own copy of the book, with my own marginal notes! Think of the effronteryl I was truly sympathetic. But Lounsbury was dead for good at The Womanls College! And that was the ancestor of other funeral pyres that followed in the course of years. WOMANLY ENDS A concomitant of education of females in those early days was elocu- tion and voice training. The English department looked askance at what appeared as an invasion of its territory, by teachers of What it considered devoid of true academic training. When linally a teacher was appointed whose method also seemed an intrusion upon legitimate physical training, and when her vocal demonstrations and those of her students on the third floor of Goucher Hall not only disturbed the dean in his meditations and office work, but came into conflict with the picturesque cries of the street'venders of oysters and fish, the department, by universal assent, was abolished. While it lasted in this later form it was a grotesque success. And this success killed it. While the college authorities tried in every way to shape the education of the young women to what was termed uwomanly endsf, the girls tried in every way to imitate the colleges for men. Hence the hazing, the class rushes and hnally the college yell and the class yells. The college yell, uttered as raucously and vociferously as possible, had the beautiful lines for its content: Hoop-ah-boopah-hoop-ah. roar! The Womanis College of Baltimore. It was used on all and sundry occasions, in time and out of time. It hurt our ears and our refined feelings. Dean Van Meter, for some years chaplain in the U. S. Navy, fmally introduced the truly lovely bugle call of the navy: B-A-L-T-I-M-OeR-E BALTIMORE And this is as good a call as I have ever heard. The story is still told that when some very modest young ladies of the gymnasium classes protested against the presence of men at their exhibition drill, and of male attire in dramatics, the more frivolous sisters had their innings. For one morning when Goucher Hall opened, all the legs of chairs and tables in the central pavilion of Goucher Hall were draped in black. After that the air current was more liberal. OUT-OF-DOOR PLAYS Among the nrst out-of-door plays was Schneewittchen, given by the Ger- man Club at our home Waldegg, at Mt. Washington, on a line spring day I261

Page 23 text:

the time and vitality of our students. Serious danger to the cause was over- come by successive schedules of intensive rather than extensive curricula, courses being scheduled at one time for five hours weekly, later for four hours weekly in each subject. This meant that a student could not take more than three courses each semester while the schedule consisted of five hour courses, or at most, four when it consisted of four hour courses. It was a narrower, but a deeper channel through which they sailed, and it seemed to us very healthy. At first the Chair of Hygiene and Physical Training, and the position of Medical Director of the College seemed to be doomed to dis-continuity. Dr. Alice Hall, after three years in the position, was married; Dr. Mary Mitchell served for about three years, and likewise married. It was then that Dr. Lillian Welsh was appointed to What The Sun termed the Matrimonial Chair at Goucher. She broke the ban. For thirty years her brilliant mind. her deeply scientilic spirit, her strong personality, her pungent wit, her frank criticism of foibles of women and menU, her ceaseless labor, her sympathetic nature, built up one of the great departments of Goucher College or of any college. What she meant to Goucher, to its women, to the cause of woman's education and emancipation has only been touched upon in her own record in Thirty Years in Baltimore. It remains to be said by others who will give her the credit that is her due. Among the champions of the cause of woman she has made herself one of the outstanding figures of her time. THE FIRST APPLICANTS Among the iirst applicants for admission to College in 1888 was a little girl, who, in filling out her llblank in answer to the question: llWhat is your object in coming to college? stated: To become wise and good. Another came with an apron neatly fastened to her shoulders and two braids hanging down her neck. One of these today is a dignified matron, the other a successful business woman. Another of the youngsters who had an afternoon class in French with me at two o'clock, told me that I would have to change the hour, as she always took luncheon with her grandmother on that day at that hour! THE FIRST FUNERAL PYRE Professor Frank Roscoe Butler, first head of the English department. was a man of high intellect, a scholar trained both at Boston University and at European Universities, a man of line taste in literature, widely and deeply read, a thorough scholar, exacting upon himself and upon his students. They groaned under the burden of work and occasionally grumbled. But his was the influence that went deep and proved enduring in the college at large and among his students in particular. He left the Womanls College a generation ago, but his influence still survives, Once, however, he overstrained the bow. It was when he introduced the study of the works of Professor Lounsbury, the distinguished English scholar. The students sighed, groaned, mutely protested, to no avail. When however, Lounsbury had been exhausted and the UH

Page 25 text:

in 1900. Mrs. Goucher honored the occasion with her presence. The first out-of-door class play was The Canterbury Pilgrims, by Percy McKaye, given by the Class of 1906 in the spring of their Sophomore year, 1904-, at uVJay- sidef, Mt. Washington, the tree-embowered home of two of our Alumnae, the Misses Mabel and Christine Carter. Thereafter out-of-door plays of the less formal kind became the tradition, although 1914 gave Antigone out-of-doors in the spring of 1914. The Class of 1909 jinally initiated the Sophomore play given on the spring boat-ride, in 1907. It was Hiawatha and the locus operandi was somewhere down near Stony Creek shore. The poetic effect of canoes, filled with war-whooping Indians shooting out from under the cover of the shore-shrubbery of the quiet little bay as our steamer slowly moved in, is unforgettable. And 1906 remembers their entertainment by 1908 on a sail to 1iBayreuth tBay Ridgey, where on the Festspielhaus tthe great dance pavillioni a part of Wagneris Meistersinger was rendered. The whole scheme, including German band and ship officers in white uniform, was :arried out to perfection. A TTHOPTteiiTHE RULES McCoy Hall, Johns Hopkins University. It is the evening of the Hopkins Glee Club Concert. Mrs. Pierce, one of the Hall mistresses, is chaperoning a party of Goucher girls to the concert, which is given in the large main lecture room and takes its solemn course tit was before the age of jazz and undergraduatesy. A 'iHopii was to follow. Dancing with men, anywhere in the city, was strictly forbidden to all residents in the dormitories of Goucher. However, on this evening, while the chairs were being removed from the hall, contact was established between the Goucher girls and the Hopkins men. There was no rule against that, in the presence of the chap- erone. Then came an invitation for a dance or two. The Hall mistress looked stern and shook her head. The invitation became an insistent, urgent prayer. But the Hall mistress could not change the rule. And then the dreadful thing happened: in spite of her protests several members of the party yielded and thereby broke THE RULES. Court inquisition, indictment and investigation. The least punishment was suspension from college, the worst expulsion. After a few days one of the number sacrificed herself, and claimed to have been the leader in the insurrection. Her sacrifice was so touch- ing that she received some slight penaltyeand the rest went free. For the record of these students was creditable in every way, and the Hopkins men could not exactly be blamed for their taste in the matter nor the faculty for taking a humane view of the incident. Tempora mutantur. After a time the 1'Southern Prom was instituted, very exclusive, but sans dancing. ALTO DALE DAY Alto Dale Day was the red letter day for seniors, uhall girls and faculty, usually about Decoration Day in May. It was the day when Dr. and Mrs. Goucher entertained their visitors at their country estate, Alto Dale, beyond Pikesville. The Mansion is set against lofty trees of ancient woods. Directly 1271