Hampden Sydney College - Kaleidoscope Yearbook (Hampden Sydney, VA)

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experience of the kind, or the agony of fright that I endured. The more lugubrious my tones and manner became, the more irrepressible was the merriment all over the Chapel. The Seniors sat on the first bench below the platform, fthat room is your present gym- nasium, and I can see them now trying to suppress their almost convulsive laughter. One Sophomore in our class, however, was never laughed at. William Mayo Atkinson, of Winchester, was always listened to with marked respect: for his declaiming was true oratory. He spoke with such impressiveness of manner, and with such appropriateness and gracefulness, and with such natural gestures, that it was worth coming over to the Chapel to hear him. When we entered upon our Senior year, one of the Freshmen was a boy only fourteen years old, if I remember correctly, but was well prepared for college. He was quiet, dig- nified, and a capital student. Even now I can see JAMES R. THORNTON walking across the campus with his long stride. A more absolutely irreproachable student was never found inside the walls of any college, I imagine. Well remembered, too, is Col. Kemper's broad smile of gratification the next June when he announced that two of his Freshmen, Lipscomb and Thornton had made IOO on their mathematics examination. Three years later Thornton graduated with first honors. The respect and admiration which he inspired as a Freshman continued unabated-it could hardly increase-during all of his life. We were colleagues in the Faculty later on: and to win and retain the friendship of such a man was a thing to be deeply grateful for. There was no organized Y. M. C. A. in those days. We sent no delegates to conventions, and had no paid college secretaries. It was considered sufficient for the young to be trained and guided by mature and experienced men. But we had our prayer meetingsg we were taught in Bible classes: we did not study on Sunday: nor were there any teams to use on Sunday, to make it a day of travel, or to make any trips. I hope that Hampden-Sidney is still true to those principles, and that she will ever remain so. 'YHA eggs .tit - .r ff l 'QW ,mag '5--1 X jf . ff -Q , s s f 11 .wfiv . -'wer S1155 'J'-2,71 ' T 75 ' Tl- 's' ft f- w Y 1-il,.g:11-txw 17

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How about the athletic side of college life at that time? Well, to begin with, we had a gymnasium. It stood on the campus under the big oaks near the south corner of the Fourth Passage. It consisted of a horizontal bar, one pair of parallel bars, and a high frame from the cross-piece, from which there hung two ropes, with an iron ring at the end of each. That constituted our gymnasium, in which various stunts were performed, and from which we derived much pleasurable exercise. Any teams? Oh no: no teams, but more good, rollicking fun than you fellows have now-a-days, because so many more of us played. We were not training a select few, at great expense for a coach, uniforms and traveling expenses, in order that these few might beat some other team, but we played with one andther, and sometimes nearly the whole college would be on the campus at once, playing old-fashioned football. Moreover, it never occurred to us that we needed a cheer leader to tell us when to root for our side. Our match games of baseball were played with the Seminary students: but the spectators had to stand, for even bleachers were an unknown quantity, to say nothing of a grand-stand. In one of our baseball games with each other, I remember that I-fellows, I ought not to tell this on myself, but it is too good to keep, so here goes-I made in one inning all the three outs for my side! That was sufficient to indicate that I was not destined to shine as a Delahanty or Ty Cobb, fboys, there is an Anachronism there, but it won't bite youl, so l turned my attention towards a far humbler sphere, and have been making my living mainly as a teacher of Greek. As a hard-shell Baptist once said in Mississippi to the Chancellor of the State University, who had told the Baptist brother that he taught Greek in the institution :- Greek, eh? Well-er-isn't that a mighty dry subject for a Christian man? Now that I have told on myself, here is a nut for you boys to crack: in that famous inning, what was the maximum and what the minimum number of runs for my side? We had no hazing, either, at least none that would be called so now. There was a thing called putting a fellow through the Kappa Gamma. It was a rude kind of prac- tical joke, but involved nothing brutal. The boy was blind-folded, and was made to sit in a chair that was placed on a table. Then he had to sing songs, answer foolish questions, and make himself generally ridiculous. At the close of it all he was drenched with a bucket of water, and the uinitiatorsn then extinguished the lights and rushed out of the room whooping and yelling. In my Senior year C68-'69D, we turned the tables on a party of this kind by forming a brigade of water carriers, and the out-rushing crowd found themselves met in the darkness by volley after volley as we dashed the water upon the retreating hazers. The discreditable feature even of such wild hazing as that which we were trying to suppress, is that it is many against one, which is the essence of cowardice, and this alone ought to stamp out all forms of hazing among the privileged youth who attend our colleges. There was one kind of cruelty, however, in which the Faculty indulged. They made the lower classes declaim in the Chapel on Friday afternoons. The junior Class furnished the first victimsg then the Sophomores, and last the Freshmen. The Seniors had to deliver original orations, and so they came last, to give them time to think up something original. These Friday afternoons were the most joyous events of the week for all except the poor wretches who had to declaim. I am not likely to forget my first 16

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